Up until a few months ago, the term DevOps was simply another buzzword
which filled my Twitter feed that evoked a particular idea but wasn’t really concrete
to me. Similar to other buzzwords related to software development such as NoSQL and
Agile, it is hard to pin down what the definitive definition of the term is just what
it wasn’t. If you aren’t familiar with DevOps, a simple definition is that the goal
of DevOps is to address this common problem when building online services

All of these trends already applied to our organization before we made the big switch
to merge the three engineering disciplines into a DevOps role. We’d already embraced
the Agile development model complete
with two to four week sprints, daily scrums, burn-down charts, and senior program
managers playing the role of the product owner (although we use the term scenario
owner). Given our market position as the underdog to Google in search and advertising,
our business leaders always wants to ship more
features, more quickly while maintaining high product quality. In addition, there’s
a ton of peer pressure for all of us at Microsoft to leverage internal tools Windows
Azure and Autopilot for
as much of our cloud services needs as possible instead of rolling our own data centers
and hardware configurations.

Technically our organization was already committed to DevOps practices before we made
the transition that eliminated roles. However the what the organization realized is
that a bigger change to the culture was needed for us to get the most value out of
these practices. The challenge we faced is that the organizational structure of separate
roles for developers, testers and operations tends to create these walls where one
role feels their responsibility is for a certain part of the development cycle and
then tosses the results of their efforts down stream to the next set of folks in the
delivery pipeline. Developers tended to think their job was to write code and quality
was the role of testers. Testers felt their role was to create test frameworks and
find bugs then deployment was the role of the operations team. The operations team
tended to think their role was keeping the live site running without the ability to
significantly change how the product was built. No matter how open and collaborative
the people are on your team, these strictly defined roles create these walls. My favorite
analogy for this situation is like comparing two families who are on a diet trying
to lose weight and one of them has fruit, veggies and healthy snacks in the pantry
while the other has pop tarts, potato chips, chocolate and ice cream in theirs. No
matter how much will power the latter family has, they are more likely to “cheat”
on their diet than the first family because they have created an environment that
makes it harder for them to do the right thing.

Benefits

The benefits of fully embracing DevOps are fairly self-evident so I won’t spend time
on discussing the obvious benefits that have been beaten to death elsewhere. I will
talk about the benefits I’ve seen in our specific case of merging the 3 previous engineering
roles into a single one. The most significant change is the cultural change towards
how we view automation of every step related to deployment and monitoring. It turns
out that there is a big difference when approaching a problem from the perspective
of taking away people’s jobs (i.e. automating what the operations team does) versus
making your team more effective (i.e. reducing the amount of time the engineering
team spends on operational tasks that can be automated thus giving us more time to
work on features that move the business forward). This has probably the biggest surprise,
although obvious in hindsight, as well as the biggest benefit.

We’ve also begun to see faster time to resolve issues from build breaks to features
failing in production due to fact that the on-call person (we call them Directly Responsible
Individuals or DRIs) is now a full member of the engineering team who is expected
to be capable of debugging and fixing issues encountered as part of being on-call.
This is an improvement from prior models where the operations team were the primary
folks on-call and would tend to pull in the development team as a last resort outside
of business hours.

As a program manager (or product manager if you’re a Silicon Valley company), I find
it has made my job easier since I have fewer people to talk to because we’ve consolidated
engineering managers. No longer having to talk to an development manager separately
from the manager of systems engineers separately from a test manager has made communication
far more efficient for me.

Challenges

There are a number of risks with any organization taking the steps that we have at
Bing Ads. The biggest risk is definitely attrition especially at a company like Microsoft
where these well-defined roles have been a part of the culture for decades and are
still part & parcel of how the majority of the company does business. A number
of people may feel that this is a bait and switch on their career plans with the new
job definitions not aligning with how they saw their roles evolving over time. Others
may not mind that as much but may simply feel that their skills may not be as valuable
in the new world especially as they now need to learn a set of new skills. I’ve had
one simple argument when I’ve met people with this mindset. The first is that DevOps
is here to stay. The industry trends that have had more and more companies from Facebook
and Amazon to Etsy and Netflix blurring the lines between developers, test engineers
and operations staff will not go away. Companies aren’t going to want to start shipping
less frequently nor will they want to bring back manual deployment processes instead
of automating as much as possible. The skills you learn in a DevOps culture will make
you more broadly valuable wherever they find their next role whether it is a traditional
specialized engineering structure or in a DevOps based organization.

Other places where we’re still figuring things out are best practices around ownership
of testing. We currently try to follow a “you build it, you test it, you deploy it”
culture as much as possible although allowing any dev to deploy code has turned out
to be bit more challenging than we expected since we had to ensure we do not run afoul
of the structures we had in place to stay compliant with various
regulations. Testing your own code is one of topics where many
in the industry have come out against as being
generally a bad idea. I remember arguments from my college classes from software
engineering professors about the blind spots developers have about their software
requiring the need for dedicated teams to do testing. We do have mitigations in place
such as test plan reviews and code reviews to ensure there are alternate pairs of
eyes looking at the problem space not just the developer who created the functionality.
There is also the school of thought that since the person who wrote the code will
likely be the person woken up in the middle of the night if it goes haywire at an
inopportune moment, there is a sense of self preservation that will cause more diligence
to be applied to the problem than was the case in the previous eras of boxed software
which is when most of the anti-developer testing arguments were made.

My Experiences with DevOps while Working in Bing Adshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,e9e8aef0-d46f-4c30-a0cc-7bb3f7162b3c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2014/01/20/MyExperiencesWithDevOpsWhileWorkingInBingAds.aspx
Mon, 20 Jan 2014 15:53:50 GMT<p>
Up until a few months ago, the term <code>DevOps</code> was simply another buzzword
which filled my Twitter feed that evoked a particular idea but wasn’t really concrete
to me. Similar to other buzzwords related to software development such as NoSQL and
Agile, it is hard to pin down what the definitive definition of the term is just what
it wasn’t. If you aren’t familiar with DevOps, a simple definition is that the goal
of DevOps is to address this common problem when building online services
</p>
<p>
<img src="http://dev2ops.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/WallOfConfusion_Release.png" />
</p>
<h3>The Big Switch
</h3>
<p>
A couple of months ago, my work group took what many would consider a rather extreme
step in eliminating this wall between developers and operations. Specifically, <a href="http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/home">Bing
Ads</a> transitioned away from the traditional Microsoft engineering model of having <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/msidc/career/sde.aspx">software
design engineers</a> (aka developers), <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/msidc/career/sdet.aspx">software
design engineers in test</a> (testers) and <a href="http://careers.microsoft.com/careers/en/gbl/professions.aspx#it">service
operations</a> (ops) and merged all of these roles into a single engineering role.
As it states in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps">the Wikipedia entry
for DevOps</a>, the adoption of DevOps was driven by the following trends
</p>
<ol>
<li>
Use of agile and other development processes and methodologies
</li>
<li>
Demand for an increased rate of production releases from application and business
unit stakeholders
</li>
<li>
Wide availability of virtualized and cloud infrastructure from internal and external
providers
</li>
<li>
Increased usage of data center automation and configuration management tools
</li>
</ol>
<p>
All of these trends already applied to our organization before we made the big switch
to merge the three engineering disciplines into a DevOps role. We’d already embraced
the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(development)">Agile development model</a> complete
with two to four week sprints, daily scrums, burn-down charts, and senior program
managers playing the role of the product owner (although we use the term scenario
owner). Given our market position as the underdog to Google in search and advertising,
our business leaders always wants to ship <a title="Search Engine Watch: Big Bing Ads 2013 Recap" href="http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2287605/Big-Bing-Ads-2013-Recap">more
features, more quickly</a> while maintaining high product quality. In addition, there’s
a ton of peer pressure for all of us at Microsoft to leverage internal tools <a href="http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/">Windows
Azure</a> and <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=64604">Autopilot</a> for
as much of our cloud services needs as possible instead of rolling our own data centers
and hardware configurations.
</p>
<p>
Technically our organization was already committed to DevOps practices before we made
the transition that eliminated roles. However the what the organization realized is
that a bigger change to the culture was needed for us to get the most value out of
these practices. The challenge we faced is that the organizational structure of separate
roles for developers, testers and operations tends to create these walls where one
role feels their responsibility is for a certain part of the development cycle and
then tosses the results of their efforts down stream to the next set of folks in the
delivery pipeline. Developers tended to think their job was to write code and quality
was the role of testers. Testers felt their role was to create test frameworks and
find bugs then deployment was the role of the operations team. The operations team
tended to think their role was keeping the live site running without the ability to
significantly change how the product was built. No matter how open and collaborative
the people are on your team, these strictly defined roles create these walls. My favorite
analogy for this situation is like comparing two families who are on a diet trying
to lose weight and one of them has fruit, veggies and healthy snacks in the pantry
while the other has pop tarts, potato chips, chocolate and ice cream in theirs. No
matter how much will power the latter family has, they are more likely to “cheat”
on their diet than the first family because they have created an environment that
makes it harder for them to do the right thing.
</p>
<h3>Benefits
</h3>
<p>
The benefits of fully embracing DevOps are fairly self-evident so I won’t spend time
on discussing the obvious benefits that have been beaten to death elsewhere. I will
talk about the benefits I’ve seen in our specific case of merging the 3 previous engineering
roles into a single one. The most significant change is the cultural change towards
how we view automation of every step related to deployment and monitoring. It turns
out that there is a big difference when approaching a problem from the perspective
of taking away people’s jobs (i.e. automating what the operations team does) versus
making your team more effective (i.e. reducing the amount of time the engineering
team spends on operational tasks that can be automated thus giving us more time to
work on features that move the business forward). This has probably the biggest surprise,
although obvious in hindsight, as well as the biggest benefit.
</p>
<p>
We’ve also begun to see faster time to resolve issues from build breaks to features
failing in production due to fact that the on-call person (we call them Directly Responsible
Individuals or DRIs) is now a full member of the engineering team who is expected
to be capable of debugging and fixing issues encountered as part of being on-call.
This is an improvement from prior models where the operations team were the primary
folks on-call and would tend to pull in the development team as a last resort outside
of business hours.&#160;&#160;
</p>
<p>
As a program manager (or product manager if you’re a Silicon Valley company), I find
it has made my job easier since I have fewer people to talk to because we’ve consolidated
engineering managers. No longer having to talk to an development manager separately
from the manager of systems engineers separately from a test manager has made communication
far more efficient for me.
</p>
<h3>Challenges
</h3>
<p>
There are a number of risks with any organization taking the steps that we have at
Bing Ads. The biggest risk is definitely attrition especially at a company like Microsoft
where these well-defined roles have been a part of the culture for decades and are
still part &amp; parcel of how the majority of the company does business. A number
of people may feel that this is a bait and switch on their career plans with the new
job definitions not aligning with how they saw their roles evolving over time. Others
may not mind that as much but may simply feel that their skills may not be as valuable
in the new world especially as they now need to learn a set of new skills. I’ve had
one simple argument when I’ve met people with this mindset. The first is that DevOps
is here to stay. The industry trends that have had more and more companies from Facebook
and Amazon to Etsy and Netflix blurring the lines between developers, test engineers
and operations staff will not go away. Companies aren’t going to want to start shipping
less frequently nor will they want to bring back manual deployment processes instead
of automating as much as possible. The skills you learn in a DevOps culture will make
you more broadly valuable wherever they find their next role whether it is a traditional
specialized engineering structure or in a DevOps based organization.
</p>
<p>
Other places where we’re still figuring things out are best practices around ownership
of testing. We currently try to follow a “you build it, you test it, you deploy it”
culture as much as possible although allowing any dev to deploy code has turned out
to be bit more challenging than we expected since we had to ensure we do not run afoul
of the structures we had in place to stay compliant with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology_controls#IT_controls_and_the_Sarbanes-Oxley_Act_.28SOX.29">various
regulations</a>. Testing your own code is one of topics where <a href="http://thecodist.com/article/programmers_should_not_test_their_own_code">many
in the industry</a> have come out against as <a href="http://www.developerfusion.com/column/8314/creating-a-culture-of-quality-part-1/">being
generally a bad idea</a>. I remember arguments from my college classes from software
engineering professors about the blind spots developers have about their software
requiring the need for dedicated teams to do testing. We do have mitigations in place
such as test plan reviews and code reviews to ensure there are alternate pairs of
eyes looking at the problem space not just the developer who created the functionality.
There is also the school of thought that since the person who wrote the code will
likely be the person woken up in the middle of the night if it goes haywire at an
inopportune moment, there is a sense of self preservation that will cause more diligence
to be applied to the problem than was the case in the previous eras of boxed software
which is when most of the anti-developer testing arguments were made.
</p>
<h3>Further Reading
</h3>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps">DevOps on Wikipedia</a>
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://dev2ops.org/2010/02/what-is-devops/">What is DevOps?</a> by Damon
Edwards
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://devops.com/2012/11/08/release-engineering-at-facebook/">Release Engineering
at Facebook</a> based on a talk by Chuck Rossi
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://perfcap.blogspot.com/2012/03/ops-devops-and-noops-at-netflix.html">Ops,
DevOps and PaaS (NoOps) at Netflix</a> by Adrian Cockcroft
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
&#160;
</p>
<p>
<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Eminem/e/B000APFS8Y/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_3?qid=1390182052&amp;sr=8-3">Eminem</a> – <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;field-keywords=rap+god">Rap
God</a> <img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=e9e8aef0-d46f-4c30-a0cc-7bb3f7162b3c" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,e9e8aef0-d46f-4c30-a0cc-7bb3f7162b3c.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeProgramminghttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=5e4d8fa5-1b5c-4730-9e9d-f157eb3b650chttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,5e4d8fa5-1b5c-4730-9e9d-f157eb3b650c.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,5e4d8fa5-1b5c-4730-9e9d-f157eb3b650c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=5e4d8fa5-1b5c-4730-9e9d-f157eb3b650c2

Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack
ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove
out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,”
“the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over
the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage
of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average,
then poor. …

For that reason, executives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything
they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that
they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had real-world consequences: those
at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no
cash or were shown the door. …

“The behavior this engenders, people do everything they can to stay out of the
bottom bucket,” one Microsoft engineer said. “People responsible for features will
openly sabotage other people’s efforts. One of the most valuable things I learned
was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information
from colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings.” Worse, because
the reviews came every six months, employees and their supervisors—who were also ranked—focused
on their short-term performance, rather than on longer efforts to innovate. …

This reads as a very damning indictment of the Microsoft performance appraisal system.
Although I've now been at Microsoft for 12 years and a manager for the last three
of them, the purpose of this blog post isn't to defend or expand on the details of
performance reviews at Microsoft. The purpose of this blog post is to point out that
one often needs multiple data points before coming to sweeping generalizations when
discussing something as complex as the success or failure of technology companies.

The Four Horsemen: Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple

A few years ago, Eric
Schmidt described the "gang of four" companies driving innovation and growth
in tech as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. The implication being that
these were the four leading companies in the tech industry. For the purpose of this
blog post, I’ll take this implication at face value and will consider these 4 companies
as leading examples of what other companies should aim to emulate in the technology
industry. In fact, I’ll go one further and reference Mobile
is eating the world, autumn 2013 edition by Benedict Evans where he cites these
four companies as “setting the agenda” whereas when Microsoft is mentioned, it’s only
to speak about it’s “growing irrelevance”.

Now that we’ve established that these four companies are worthy of emulation, how
exactly do these companies evaluate employee performance anyway?

Unfortunately, I could not find any information either off-the-record from friends
or on the Internet about how performance reviews work at Apple. On the other hand,
there has been enough written about the other three companies that we can still draw
some conclusions about how performance appraisal works at relevant technology companies.

Then there is a (roughly) two week period of calibration where managers meet to
look at the assessments of everyone on their team and ensure that people are rated
correctly relative to their peers. Facebook has seven performance assessments as well
as a guideline for what % of employees should be at each level, however it is explicitly
not a forced curve, particularly for small teams. The
curve exists to ensure that extraordinary performance is rewarded (I believe the distribution
is such that only 2% or less of employees are given the highest rating every cycle)
and that if hard conversations need to happen, they happen.

Calibration happens at the team level and at the senior management level (Mark,
Sheryl, and all of their direct reports look at the numbers for the whole company,
lists of the highest performers, lists of the lowest performers, etc). Performance
Assessments are final and they are used to determine compensation like raises, bonuses,
and additional equity grants. Facebook gives out raises and additional equity once
a year but they do promotions and bonuses twice a year. Compensation at Facebook is
almost entirely formulaic with multipliers (based on the Performance Assessment) for
bonuses, raises, and additional equity grants.

Hmmm, so it looks like Facebook uses a curve but the argument seems to be that it
is to ensure that extraordinary performance can be rewarded yet there is a quota on
how many extraordinary performers that can exist according to the system.

In the second meeting, which takes place in September or October, the leaders
talk some more about who's getting a promotion, and talk about who is doing well and
who is doing poorly. Amazon's managers
group employees into three tiers: The top 20%, who are groomed for promotions, the
next 70% who are kept happy, and the bottom 10%, who are either let go, or told to
get it together.

This system, which was created by Jeff Bezos, is supposed to cut down on politics
and in-fighting. Unfortunately, Stone says it has the opposite effect."Ambitious
employees tend to spend months having lunch and coffee with their boss’s peers to
ensure a positive outcome once the topic of their proposed promotion is raised in
[the meetings]," says Stone.

Stone also notes that promotions are very limited at Amazon,
so if you fight for your employee to get a promotion, it means someone else's employee
gets snubbed. And anyone in the room can nuke someone else's promotion.

OK, so it seems Amazon also has a curve and it seems more explicit that the bottom
10% are targeted for negative messaging. But it seems there is a new concept we’re
being introduced to. A peer review based system for promotion which in theory is in
place to reduce cronyism (e.g. working for a boss that’s a friend who then promotes
you for simply having a pulse) which in reality turns into politics-driven affair
since everyone needs to like you for you to get ahead at the company. Good luck, rocking
the boat in such environments.

So far we’re not really seeing much alternative ideas for tech companies that decide
Microsoft’s employee appraisal system is one they don’t want to emulate. Let’s see
what we can learn from how performance reviews are done at Google to turn the tide.
For this I think we’ll look at two perspectives on the Google performance appraisal
system. First here is an excerpt from a
review on Glassdoor from a Google employee that loves everything about working at
the company describing the performance review system.

Promotion and work performances is entirely reliant on peer reviews. In other
words, to get ahead at Google and to get a positive performance review, you must get
positive reviews from your fellow co-workers. Your manager might love you, but if
your co-workers don't like you, you have some work to do. Managers are also required
to seek peer review from those they manage. (I have never seen this before in my career.)
Senior level employees from other fields are also encouraged to seek peer reviews
from people in other departments. For example, engineers need reviews from people
other than engineers in order to advance. For this reason, a culture of cooperation
is endemic at Google. This is great because the percentage of "cowboys"
that seems common at other high tech companies is quite low at Google. It also fosters
an awareness of the type of contribution made by people outside your department, since
everyone reviews people in other fields, and therefore must learn a bit about what
others do outside their sphere.

Google's original intention in designing the byzantine monstrosity known as "Perf"
was noble: to provide multiple avenues toward success. Someone who got mediocre reviews
from his manager but excellent peer reviews could move up, or at least laterally.
(This prevented the scenario where a manager uses mediocre or even negative reviews
in order to prevent transfers, a known problem at Google.) It was an "OR-gate".
If you had good managerial reviews or good peer reviews or objectively demonstrable
accomplishments, you'd be in good standing and move up.Eventually, it became an AND-gate. To
get a promotion or even a transfer, you had to have managerial blessing and good peer
reviews and high visibility and the willingness (as Piaw
Na alluded) to spend considerable
amounts of time and energy marketing yourself. So it became a morale-killing,
time-consuming "No Machine" that people spent a considerable amount of time
figuring out how to game. The typical corporate manager-as-SPOF dynamic that Perf
was invented to extinguish was strengthened by the "objective" soothsaying
they call "calibration scores". – Anonymous

The big one is that engineers have to apply for a promotion and put together their
own promotion packet. There's no human being who can do that and not end the process
thinking, "Oh boy, I did so much work. I really deserve a promotion." Since
the process doesn't promote everyone, that creates a number of disgruntled employees.
Even if these employees were to eventually get promoted later, they tend to think,
"I should have gotten this N quarters/years ago,", not "I'm so glad
I got this promotion." The net result is that very few people are pleasantly
surprised when they get promoted, while a lot of people get disappointed. – Piaw
Na

Although there isn’t forced ranking in place, it does looks like Google one-upped
Amazon in making it difficult to climb up their corporate ladder by having a promotion
process based on pleasing everyone.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

To summarize, so far it looks like Amazon and Facebook have fairly similar performance
review structures as Microsoft much-lambasted system while Google seems to have a
performance that seems to trade one set of problems for a different set. As an honorary
mention, I’d like to point to the
QPR system recently put in place at Yahoo by Marissa Mayer which is also a vitality
curve based system.

This then raises the question of why if forced ranking and other similarly disheartening
employee appraisal processes are commonplace in the industry that tech blogs makes
it seem the practice is limited to Microsoft and then blame it for the challenges
the company has faced in recent years? From what I can tell, the reason is twofold.
The first is that Microsoft employees stick around at the company for far longer than
peers at other companies. From the Geekwire article Amazon,
Google employees ranked as ‘least loyal’ which looks at data from PayScale, we
learn

Amazon.com tied for second for the least loyal employees with a median tenure
of one year, while Google tied for fourth with just 1.1 years of tenure on average.
Apple, meanwhile, tied for 36th at two years…Microsoft, however, was all the way down
the list tied for 259th with an average tenure of four years.

Most people at companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google either just got there or
left before they would have to deal with the frustration of being disappointed by
the performance appraisal system over multiple cycles. On the other hand, the average
Microsoft employee has been at the company for far longer and when they do leave have
had multiple brushes with the performance appraisal system. Just from a raw numbers
perspective given average tenure at the company and number of employees, there are
a lot more people who you can find that would complain about the performance review
system at Microsoft than say at Amazon which has very similar systems in place.

The second reason I believe there are more people willing to talk to the press about
the performance review system at Microsoft than at say Google or Amazon, is that it
doesn’t fit the narrative to air those complaints. When you see a chart like below,
it is easy to look for simple answers to explain the differences in the stock market’s
belief in the success of Microsoft versus the “four horsemen”.

On the other hand, it is also hard for employees to complain when the company they
work for is winning in new markets and is being praised by the industry press. Glassdoor
is full of complains about poor work/life balance at Apple but no one is going
to write a damning expose about the company’s employee morale problems as long as
the company doesn’t slip in the marketplace. However once a company starts to falter
in the marketplace, everything they do is bad and is the cause of their demise according
to the pundits. I’ve been amused by the number of articles blaming
Blackberry’s dual CEO model for the company’s failures even though that is effectively
the Facebook model if you ask anyone who works there and one could argue at one point Google
had a triple CEO model with Eric, Larry & Sergey all running the company in
their different ways.

Everything Sucks

The bottom line is that performance appraisal systems at large companies always suck
for the set of reasons covered extremely well by Steven Sinofsky in his blog post Realities
of Performance Appraisal. He does a good job of pointing out some of the realities
of businesses and human nature that guarantee that these processes will always come
across as soul crushingly awful when applied at large enough scale including

Performance systems conflate performance and compensation with organizational
budgets. No matter how you look at it, one person cannot be evaluated and paid
in isolation of budgets. The company as a whole has a budget for how much to pay people
(salary, bonus, stock, etc.) No matter what an individual’s compensation is part of
a system that ultimately has a budget. The vast majority of mechanical or quantitative
effort in the system is not about one person’s performance but about determining how
to pay everyone within the budget. While it is desirable to distinguish between professional
development and compensation, that will almost certainly get lost once a person sees
their compensation or once a manager has to assign a rating. Any suggestion as to
how to be more fair, allow for more flexibility, provide more absolute ratings, or
otherwise separate performance from compensation must still come up with a way to
stick to a budget. The presence of a budget drives the existence of a system. There
is always a budget and don’t be fooled by “found money” as that’s just a budget trick.

This is the fundamental conceit of performance appraisal systems. For large companies
they are primarily about answering the question of “how do we distribute our promotion
and bonus budget?” by drawing a fuzzy line between employee work activities and how
much money they actually have to spend (e.g. policy that only 2% of Facebook employees
can have extraordinary rewards is a function of budgets not a natural law of distribution
of extraordinary employees at Facebook or any other company in the world). Companies
can’t just say everyone who does an excellent job gets $1,000 bonus because they may
not have $1,000 to spend per employee in the budget.

And with that you have the answer to the question in the title of this blog post.

Stack Ranking: Why are Amazon, Facebook and Yahoo copying Microsoft's performance review system?http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,5e4d8fa5-1b5c-4730-9e9d-f157eb3b650c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2013/11/11/StackRankingWhyAreAmazonFacebookAndYahooCopyingMicrosoftsPerformanceReviewSystem.aspx
Mon, 11 Nov 2013 15:52:39 GMT<p>
It isn't hard to find criticisms of Microsoft's employee appraisal system. Whether
it's almost decade old complaints such as Mini-Microsoft’s <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/07/microsoft-stack-ranking-is-not-good.html">Microsoft
Stack Ranking is not Good Management</a> or more recent forays into blaming it for
the company's &quot;decline&quot; such as Kurt Eichenwald's 2012 Vanity Fair opus <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer">Microsoft’s
Lost Decade</a> or the follow up <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/08/23/stack_ranking_steve_ballmer_s_employee_evaluation_system_and_microsoft_s.html">The
Poisonous Employee-Ranking System That Helps Explain Microsoft’s Decline</a> from
Slate, there are many who would lay the practice of ranking employees on <a href="http://vitalitycurve.com/">a
vitality curve</a> as the root cause of any problems facing Microsoft today. Kurt
Eichenwald's article persuasively makes that argument in the in excerpt below
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack
ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove
out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,”
“the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over
the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage
of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average,
then poor. …</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>For that reason, executives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything
they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that
they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had real-world consequences: those
at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no
cash or were shown the door. …</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>“The behavior this engenders, people do everything they can to stay out of the
bottom bucket,” one Microsoft engineer said. “People responsible for features will
openly sabotage other people’s efforts. One of the most valuable things I learned
was to give the appearance of being courteous while withholding just enough information
from colleagues to ensure they didn’t get ahead of me on the rankings.” Worse, because
the reviews came every six months, employees and their supervisors—who were also ranked—focused
on their short-term performance, rather than on longer efforts to innovate.</em> …
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This reads as a very damning indictment of the Microsoft performance appraisal system.
Although I've now been at Microsoft for 12 years and a manager for the last three
of them, the purpose of this blog post isn't to defend or expand on the details of
performance reviews at Microsoft. The purpose of this blog post is to point out that
one often needs multiple data points before coming to sweeping generalizations when
discussing something as complex as the success or failure of technology companies.
</p>
<p>
&#160;
</p>
<h3>The Four Horsemen: Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple
</h3>
<p>
A few years ago, <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/31/schmidt-gang-four-google-apple-amazon-facebook/">Eric
Schmidt described the &quot;gang of four&quot; companies driving innovation and growth
in tech</a> as Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple.&#160; The implication being that
these were the four leading companies in the tech industry. For the purpose of this
blog post, I’ll take this implication at face value and will consider these 4 companies
as leading examples of what other companies should aim to emulate in the technology
industry. In fact, I’ll go one further and reference <a href="http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/11/5/mobile-is-eating-the-world-autumn-2013-edition">Mobile
is eating the world, autumn 2013 edition</a> by Benedict Evans where he cites these
four companies as “setting the agenda” whereas when Microsoft is mentioned, it’s only
to speak about it’s “growing irrelevance”.
</p>
<p>
Now that we’ve established that these four companies are worthy of emulation, how
exactly do these companies evaluate employee performance anyway?
</p>
<p>
Unfortunately, I could not find any information either off-the-record from friends
or on the Internet about how performance reviews work at Apple. On the other hand,
there has been enough written about the other three companies that we can still draw
some conclusions about how performance appraisal works at relevant technology companies.&#160;
</p>
<p>
Let’s start with Facebook. A good overview of Facebook’s performance review system
can be found in the answers to the Quora question, <a href="http://www.quora.com/Performance-Management/What-does-Facebooks-performance-review-process-look-like">What
does Facebook's performance review process look like?</a> Below is the answer from <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/molly-graham/6/658/a50">Molly
Graham</a> who used to work in Facebook HR
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Then there is a (roughly) two week period of calibration where managers meet to
look at the assessments of everyone on their team and ensure that people are rated
correctly relative to their peers. Facebook has seven performance assessments as well
as a guideline for what % of employees should be at each level, however it is explicitly
not a forced curve, particularly for small teams. <font style="background-color: #ffff00">The
curve exists to ensure that extraordinary performance is rewarded (I believe the distribution
is such that only 2% or less of employees are given the highest rating every cycle)
and that if hard conversations need to happen, they happen</font>.</em>
</p>
<p>
<br />
<em>Calibration happens at the team level and at the senior management level (Mark,
Sheryl, and all of their direct reports look at the numbers for the whole company,
lists of the highest performers, lists of the lowest performers, etc). Performance
Assessments are final and they are used to determine compensation like raises, bonuses,
and additional equity grants. Facebook gives out raises and additional equity once
a year but they do promotions and bonuses twice a year. Compensation at Facebook is
almost entirely formulaic with multipliers (based on the Performance Assessment) for
bonuses, raises, and additional equity grants.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Hmmm, so it looks like Facebook uses a curve but the argument seems to be that it
is to ensure that extraordinary performance can be rewarded yet there is a quota on
how many extraordinary performers that can exist according to the system.
</p>
<p>
Let’s see what Amazon does in the area of employee appraisals next. For this topic,
I’ll use an excerpt from an article in Business Insider which references a leaked
document that has since been pulled and an article by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Everything-Store-Bezos-Amazon-ebook/dp/B00BWQW73E">Amazon
chronicler</a>, Brad Stone. The Business Insider article is titled <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-brutal-promotion-system-2013-10">Amazon
Has A Brutal System For Employees Trying To Get Promoted</a> and is excerpted below
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>In the second meeting, which takes place in September or October, the leaders
talk some more about who's getting a promotion, and talk about who is doing well and
who is doing poorly. </em><em><font style="background-color: #ffff00">Amazon's managers
group employees into three tiers: The top 20%, who are groomed for promotions, the
next 70% who are kept happy, and the bottom 10%, who are either let go, or told to
get it together</font>.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>This system, which was created by Jeff Bezos, is supposed to cut down on politics
and in-fighting. Unfortunately, Stone says it has the opposite effect.</em><em>&quot;Ambitious
employees tend to spend months having lunch and coffee with their boss’s peers to
ensure a positive outcome once the topic of their proposed promotion is raised in
[the meetings],&quot; says Stone.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Stone also notes that promotions are very limited at </em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/"><em>Amazon</em></a><em>,
so if you fight for your employee to get a promotion, it means someone else's employee
gets snubbed. And anyone in the room can nuke someone else's promotion.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
OK, so it seems Amazon also has a curve and it seems more explicit that the bottom
10% are targeted for negative messaging. But it seems there is a new concept we’re
being introduced to. A peer review based system for promotion which in theory is in
place to reduce cronyism (e.g. working for a boss that’s a friend who then promotes
you for simply having a pulse) which in reality turns into politics-driven affair
since everyone needs to like you for you to get ahead at the company. Good luck, rocking
the boat in such environments.
</p>
<p>
So far we’re not really seeing much alternative ideas for tech companies that decide
Microsoft’s employee appraisal system is one they don’t want to emulate. Let’s see
what we can learn from how performance reviews are done at Google to turn the tide.
For this I think we’ll look at two perspectives on the Google performance appraisal
system. First here is an excerpt from <a href="http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Google-RVW144182.htm">a
review on Glassdoor from a Google employee that loves everything about working at
the company</a> describing the performance review system.
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Promotion and work performances is entirely reliant on peer reviews. In other
words, to get ahead at Google and to get a positive performance review, you must get
positive reviews from your fellow co-workers. Your manager might love you, but if
your co-workers don't like you, you have some work to do. Managers are also required
to seek peer review from those they manage. (I have never seen this before in my career.)
Senior level employees from other fields are also encouraged to seek peer reviews
from people in other departments. For example, engineers need reviews from people
other than engineers in order to advance. For this reason, a culture of cooperation
is endemic at Google. This is great because the percentage of &quot;cowboys&quot;
that seems common at other high tech companies is quite low at Google. It also fosters
an awareness of the type of contribution made by people outside your department, since
everyone reviews people in other fields, and therefore must learn a bit about what
others do outside their sphere.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Peer reviews sound like a great idea. Now we have a performance appraisal technique
we can emulate that is different from applying recommended or forced curves as Facebook
and Amazon do. Before embracing this whole heartedly, let’s balance our perspective
with excerpts from Quora answers to <a href="http://www.quora.com/Google-Recruiting-Retention-and-People/What-are-the-major-deficiencies-of-the-performance-review-process-at-Google">What
are the major deficiencies of the performance review process at Google?</a>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Google's original intention in designing the byzantine monstrosity known as &quot;Perf&quot;
was noble: to provide multiple avenues toward success. Someone who got mediocre reviews
from his manager but excellent peer reviews could move up, or at least laterally.
(This prevented the scenario where a manager uses mediocre or even negative reviews
in order to prevent transfers, a known problem at Google.) It was an &quot;OR-gate&quot;.
If you had good managerial reviews or good peer reviews or objectively demonstrable
accomplishments, you'd be in good standing and move up.Eventually, it became an AND-gate.<font style="background-color: #ffff00"> To
get a promotion or even a transfer, you had to have managerial blessing and good peer
reviews and high visibility and the willingness (as </font></em><a href="http://www.quora.com/Piaw-Na"><em><font style="background-color: #ffff00">Piaw
Na</font></em></a><em><font style="background-color: #ffff00"> alluded) to spend considerable
amounts of time and energy marketing yourself</font>. So it became a morale-killing,
time-consuming &quot;No Machine&quot; that people spent a considerable amount of time
figuring out how to game. The typical corporate manager-as-SPOF dynamic that Perf
was invented to extinguish was strengthened by the &quot;objective&quot; soothsaying
they call &quot;calibration scores&quot;. – Anonymous</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>The big one is that engineers have to apply for a promotion and put together their
own promotion packet. There's no human being who can do that and not end the process
thinking, &quot;Oh boy, I did so much work. I really deserve a promotion.&quot; Since
the process doesn't promote everyone, that creates a number of disgruntled employees.
Even if these employees were to eventually get promoted later, they tend to think,
&quot;I should have gotten this N quarters/years ago,&quot;, not &quot;I'm so glad
I got this promotion.&quot; The net result is that very few people are pleasantly
surprised when they get promoted, while a lot of people get disappointed.</em> – <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=980143&amp;authType=NAME_SEARCH&amp;authToken=B7xR&amp;locale=en_US&amp;srchid=65671861384128430147&amp;srchindex=1&amp;srchtotal=1&amp;trk=vsrp_people_res_name&amp;trkInfo=VSRPsearchId%3A65671861384128430147%2CVSRPtargetId%3A980143%2CVSRPcmpt%3Aprimary">Piaw
Na</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Although there isn’t forced ranking in place, it does looks like Google one-upped
Amazon in making it difficult to climb up their corporate ladder by having a promotion
process based on pleasing everyone.
</p>
<p>
&#160;
</p>
<h3>In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King
</h3>
<p>
To summarize, so far it looks like Amazon and Facebook have fairly similar performance
review structures as Microsoft much-lambasted system while Google seems to have a
performance that seems to trade one set of problems for a different set. As an honorary
mention, I’d like to point to <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20131108/because-marissa-said-so-yahoos-bristle-at-mayers-new-qpr-ranking-system-and-silent-layoffs/?mod=tweet">the
QPR system recently put in place at Yahoo by Marissa Mayer</a> which is also a vitality
curve based system.
</p>
<p>
This then raises the question of why if forced ranking and other similarly disheartening
employee appraisal processes are commonplace in the industry that tech blogs makes
it seem the practice is limited to Microsoft and then blame it for the challenges
the company has faced in recent years? From what I can tell, the reason is twofold.
The first is that Microsoft employees stick around at the company for far longer than
peers at other companies. From the Geekwire article <a href="http://www.geekwire.com/2013/amazon-google-employees-ranked-least-loyal/">Amazon,
Google employees ranked as ‘least loyal’</a> which looks at data from PayScale, we
learn
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Amazon.com tied for second for the least loyal employees with a median tenure
of one year, while Google tied for fourth with just 1.1 years of tenure on average.
Apple, meanwhile, tied for 36th at two years…Microsoft, however, was all the way down
the list tied for 259th with an average tenure of four years.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Most people at companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google either just got there or
left before they would have to deal with the frustration of being disappointed by
the performance appraisal system over multiple cycles. On the other hand, the average
Microsoft employee has been at the company for far longer and when they do leave have
had multiple brushes with the performance appraisal system. Just from a raw numbers
perspective given average tenure at the company and number of employees, there are
a lot more people who you can find that would complain about the performance review
system at Microsoft than say at Amazon which has very similar systems in place.
</p>
<p>
The second reason I believe there are more people willing to talk to the press about
the performance review system at Microsoft than at say Google or Amazon, is that it
doesn’t fit the narrative to air those complaints. When you see a chart like below,
it is easy to look for simple answers to explain the differences in the stock market’s
belief in the success of Microsoft versus the “four horsemen”.
</p>
<p>
<img src="https://wz9pkq.sn2.df.livefilestore.com/y2p0mv3C3XLxb7mP-JIXcrG4_njhHio43IJmSZWuhL3JUYzCqDjRyzjfulamJZn5DRfI72ixD_XOPPk115SGcMRdoy4SwgL2wgibjLKkQkgKwrA_4C09oTN0eKhae9kG6-H/stocks.png?psid=2" />
</p>
<p>
On the other hand, it is also hard for employees to complain when the company they
work for is winning in new markets and is being praised by the industry press. <a href="http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Apple-Reviews-E1138.htm">Glassdoor
is full of complains about poor work/life balance at Apple</a> but no one is going
to write a damning expose about the company’s employee morale problems as long as
the company doesn’t slip in the marketplace. However once a company starts to falter
in the marketplace, everything they do is bad and is the cause of their demise according
to the pundits. I’ve been amused by the <a href="http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/how-did-blackberry-do-everything-wrong/">number</a> of <a href="http://associationsnow.com/2013/09/can-a-co-ceo-structure-work/">articles</a> blaming
Blackberry’s dual CEO model for the company’s failures even though that is effectively
the Facebook model if you ask anyone who works there and one could argue at one point <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/techcrunch-interview-with-eric-schmidt-larry-page-and-sergey-brin/">Google
had a triple CEO model</a> with Eric, Larry &amp; Sergey all running the company in
their different ways.
</p>
<p>
&#160;
</p>
<h3>Everything Sucks
</h3>
<p>
The bottom line is that performance appraisal systems at large companies always suck
for the set of reasons covered extremely well by Steven Sinofsky in his blog post <a href="http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/2013/11/09/realities-of-performance-appraisal/">Realities
of Performance Appraisal</a>. He does a good job of pointing out some of the realities
of businesses and human nature that guarantee that these processes will always come
across as soul crushingly awful when applied at large enough scale including&#160;
</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>
<em><u>Performance systems conflate performance and compensation with organizational
budgets</u>. No matter how you look at it, one person cannot be evaluated and paid
in isolation of budgets. The company as a whole has a budget for how much to pay people
(salary, bonus, stock, etc.) No matter what an individual’s compensation is part of
a system that ultimately has a budget. The vast majority of mechanical or quantitative
effort in the system is not about one person’s performance but about determining how
to pay everyone within the budget. While it is desirable to distinguish between professional
development and compensation, that will almost certainly get lost once a person sees
their compensation or once a manager has to assign a rating. Any suggestion as to
how to be more fair, allow for more flexibility, provide more absolute ratings, or
otherwise separate performance from compensation must still come up with a way to
stick to a budget. The presence of a budget drives the existence of a system. There
is always a budget and don’t be fooled by “found money” as that’s just a budget trick.</em>
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>
This is the fundamental conceit of performance appraisal systems. For large companies
they are primarily about answering the question of “how do we distribute our promotion
and bonus budget?” by drawing a fuzzy line between employee work activities and how
much money they actually have to spend (e.g. policy that only 2% of Facebook employees
can have extraordinary rewards is a function of budgets not a natural law of distribution
of extraordinary employees at Facebook or any other company in the world). Companies
can’t just say everyone who does an excellent job gets $1,000 bonus because they may
not have $1,000 to spend per employee in the budget.&#160;&#160;
</p>
<p>
And with that you have the answer to the question in the title of this blog post.
</p>
<p>
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I’ve had about four hours of sleep but can’t seem to go back to sleep. There’s
a pain of loss that feels like a death in the family and I hope writing this down
helps in some way of dealing with it.

Yesterday it was announced that Steven
Sinofsky is leaving Microsoft. As someone who considered Steven to be a role model
of executive leadership and a source of my faith in the future of Microsoft this is
a big shock. Part of me acknowledges that change is a natural part of life and nothing
lasts forever but this is still a difficult incident to digest. Steven was a leader
who understood how to leverage the strengths of an organization to build world class
products while protecting the organizations from its inherent self defeating nature.
As the saying goes a group is
its own worst enemy.

That’s it. That’s all you’re looking for. Memorize that. Recite it to yourself
before you go to bed every night. You don’t have enough time to figure out much more
in a short interview, so don’t waste time trying to figure out whether the candidate
might be pleasant to be stuck in an airport with, or whether they really know ATL
and COM programming or if they’re just faking it.

People who are Smart but don’t Get Things Done often have PhDs and
work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical.
They would rather mull over something academic about a problem rather than ship on
time. These kind of people can be identified because they love to point out the theoretical
similarity between two widely divergent concepts. For example, they will say, “Spreadsheets
are really just a special case of programming language,” and then go off for a week
and write a thrilling, brilliant whitepaper about the theoretical computational linguistic
attributes of a spreadsheet as a programming language. Smart, but not useful. The
other way to identify these people is that they have a tendency to show up at your
office, coffee mug in hand, and try to start a long conversation about the relative
merits of Java introspection vs. COM type libraries, on the day you are trying to
ship a beta.

People who Get Things Done but are not Smart will do stupid things,
seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will have to come clean up
their mess later. This makes them net liabilities to the company because not only
do they fail to contribute, but they soak up good people’s time. They are the kind
of people who decide to refactor your core algorithms to use the Visitor Pattern,
which they just read about the night before, and completely misunderstood, and instead
of simple loops adding up items in an array you’ve got an AdderVistior class (yes,
it’s spelled wrong) and a VisitationArrangingOfficer singleton and none of your code
works any more.

One of the interesting problems that faces a large software company is that it is
very easy to become full of smart people that don’t get things done and then institutionalize
this behavior by crowning them software
architects or some equivalent. Steven’s leadership style encouraged a process
and organizational structure, which you can read about in his book One
Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making, that encourages getting
stuff done by limiting the ability of the organization and people within the organization
to take up positions where they strayed far from the goals of shipping a valuable
product on time and within budget.

The way things get done in Steven’s organizations is so straightforward it hurts.
You spend some time thinking about what you want to build, you write it down so the
entire team has a shared vision of what they’re going to build and then you build
it. The part where things become contentious is that getting things done (aka shipping)
requires discipline. This means not changing your mind unless you have a good reason
to after you’ve decided on what to build and knowing when to cut loses if things are
coming in late or over budget. A great post about what it is like for an engineer
working in a Steven Sinofsky organization that embraces these principles was written
by Larry Osterman about Windows 7.

Each of the feature crews I’ve worked on so far has had dramatically different
focuses – some of the features I worked on were focused on core audio infrastructure,
some were focused almost entirely on UX (user experience) changes, and some features
involved much higher level components. Because each of the milestones was separate,
I was able to work on a series of dramatically different pieces of the system, something
I’ve really never had a chance to do before.

In Windows 7, senior management has been extremely supportive of the various development
teams that have had to make the hard decisions to scale back features that were not
going to be able to make the quality bar associated with a Windows release – and there
absolutely are major features that have gone all the way through planning only to
discover that there was too much work associated with the feature to complete it in
the time available. In Vista it would have been much harder to convince senior management
to abandon features. In Win7 senior management has stood behind the feature teams
when they’ve had to make the tough decisions. One of the messages that management
has consistently driven home to the teams is “cutting is shipping”, and they’re right.
If a feature isn’t coming together, it’s usually far better to decide NOT to deliver
a particular feature then to have that feature jeopardize the ability to ship the
whole system. In a typical Windows release there are thousands of features and it
would be a real shame if one or two of those features ended up delaying the entire
system because they really weren’t ready.

The process of building 7 has also been dramatically more transparent – even sitting
at the bottom of the stack, I feel that I’ve got a good idea about how decisions are
being made. And that increased transparency in turn means that as an individual contributor
I’m able to make better decisions about scheduling. This transparency is actually
a direct fallout of management’s decision to let the various feature teams make their
own decisions – by letting the feature teams deeper inside the planning process, the
teams naturally make better decisions.

Of course that transparency works both ways. Not only were teams allowed to see
more about what was happening in the planning process, but because management introduced
standardized reporting mechanisms across the product, the leads at every level of
the hierarchy were able to track progress against plan at a level that we’ve never
had before. From an individual developer’s standpoint, the overhead wasn’t too onerous
– basically once a week, you were asked to update your progress against plan on each
of your work items. That status was then rolled up into a series of spreadsheets and
web pages that allowed each manager to track all the teams’ progress against plan.
This allowed management to easily and quickly identify which teams were having issues
and take appropriate action to ensure that the schedules were met (either by simplifying
designs, assigning more developers, or whatever).

Transparency was also a cornerstone of Steven’s leadership style. The level of transparency
into the organization’s decision making process via formalized mechanisms as described
above as well as his personal decision making process has been unprecedented in my
experience at Microsoft. It may not be as transparent as Google’s
TGIF but on the other hand, I don’t think there’s anywhere else at Microsoft where
visibility into how and why decisions are made was as clear as in the Windows organization.

At the end of the day, I’ll miss Steven and his influence on Microsoft. I’d like to
think I became a better manager and leader from my time working spent working in his
organization as well as the multiple exchanges we had over the years. Thanks for the
memories.

Stevenhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,fc86f807-a40c-454e-8918-c77d509e7c77.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2012/11/13/Steven.aspx
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:38:44 GMT<p>
<em>I’ve had about four hours of sleep but can’t seem to go back to sleep. There’s
a pain of loss that feels like a death in the family and I hope writing this down
helps in some way of dealing with it.</em>
</p>
<p>
Yesterday it was announced that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2012/Nov12/11-12AnnouncementPR.aspx">Steven
Sinofsky is leaving Microsoft</a>. As someone who considered Steven to be a role model
of executive leadership and a source of my faith in the future of Microsoft this is
a big shock. Part of me acknowledges that change is a natural part of life and nothing
lasts forever but this is still a difficult incident to digest. Steven was a leader
who understood how to leverage the strengths of an organization to build world class
products while protecting the organizations from its inherent self defeating nature.
As the saying goes <a href="http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html">a group is
its own worst enemy</a>.
</p>
<p>
When I think about Steven Sinofsky’s leadership style, I’m reminded of <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html">Joel
Spolsky’s guide to interviewing</a> which has the following succinct description of
a great hire
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>In principle, it’s simple. You’re looking for people who are</em>
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<em>Smart, and </em>
</li>
<li>
<em>Get things done.</em>
</li>
</ol>
<p>
<em>That’s it. That’s all you’re looking for. Memorize that. Recite it to yourself
before you go to bed every night. You don’t have enough time to figure out much more
in a short interview, so don’t waste time trying to figure out whether the candidate
might be pleasant to be stuck in an airport with, or whether they really know ATL
and COM programming or if they’re just faking it.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>People who are <u>Smart </u>but don’t <u>Get Things Done</u> often have PhDs and
work in big companies where nobody listens to them because they are completely impractical.
They would rather mull over something academic about a problem rather than ship on
time. These kind of people can be identified because they love to point out the theoretical
similarity between two widely divergent concepts. For example, they will say, “Spreadsheets
are really just a special case of programming language,” and then go off for a week
and write a thrilling, brilliant whitepaper about the theoretical computational linguistic
attributes of a spreadsheet as a programming language. Smart, but not useful. The
other way to identify these people is that they have a tendency to show up at your
office, coffee mug in hand, and try to start a long conversation about the relative
merits of Java introspection vs. COM type libraries, on the day you are trying to
ship a beta.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>People who <u>Get Things Done</u> but are not <u>Smart</u> will do stupid things,
seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will have to come clean up
their mess later. This makes them net liabilities to the company because not only
do they fail to contribute, but they soak up good people’s time. They are the kind
of people who decide to refactor your core algorithms to use the Visitor Pattern,
which they just read about the night before, and completely misunderstood, and instead
of simple loops adding up items in an array you’ve got an AdderVistior class (yes,
it’s spelled wrong) and a VisitationArrangingOfficer singleton and none of your code
works any more.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
One of the interesting problems that faces a large software company is that it is
very easy to become full of smart people that don’t get things done and then institutionalize
this behavior by crowning them <a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ArchitectsDontCode">software
architects</a> or some equivalent. Steven’s leadership style encouraged a process
and organizational structure, which you can read about in his book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/One-Strategy-Organization-Planning-Decision/dp/0470560452/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1352809891&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=steven+sinofsky">One
Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making</a>, that encourages getting
stuff done by limiting the ability of the organization and people within the organization
to take up positions where they strayed far from the goals of shipping a valuable
product on time and within budget.
</p>
<p>
There are lots of people who <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4775909">disagreed
with his philosophy and approach</a> but it is hard to argue with the results of his
efforts. Under him the team that shipped Windows Vista turned around and shipped Windows
7, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY">big ass table</a> became <a href="http://www.oprah.com/gift/Microsoft-Surface-Tablet?editors_pick_id=40387">one
of Oprah's favorite things</a> and one that’s close to home is that <a href="http://www.secretgeek.net/sync_live.asp">a
mish mash of confusing consumer synchronization products</a> became <a href="http://www.skydrive.com">SkyDrive</a>.
</p>
<p>
The way things get done in Steven’s organizations is so straightforward it hurts.
You spend some time thinking about what you want to build, you write it down so the
entire team has a shared vision of what they’re going to build and then you build
it. The part where things become contentious is that getting things done (aka shipping)
requires discipline. This means not changing your mind unless you have a good reason
to after you’ve decided on what to build and knowing when to cut loses if things are
coming in late or over budget. A great post about what it is like for an engineer
working in a Steven Sinofsky organization that embraces these principles was <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2008/10/15/engineering-7-a-view-from-the-bottom.aspx">written
by Larry Osterman about Windows 7</a>.
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Each of the feature crews I’ve worked on so far has had dramatically different
focuses – some of the features I worked on were focused on core audio infrastructure,
some were focused almost entirely on UX (user experience) changes, and some features
involved much higher level components. Because each of the milestones was separate,
I was able to work on a series of dramatically different pieces of the system, something
I’ve really never had a chance to do before.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>In Windows 7, senior management has been extremely supportive of the various development
teams that have had to make the hard decisions to scale back features that were not
going to be able to make the quality bar associated with a Windows release – and there
absolutely are major features that have gone all the way through planning only to
discover that there was too much work associated with the feature to complete it in
the time available. In Vista it would have been much harder to convince senior management
to abandon features. In Win7 senior management has stood behind the feature teams
when they’ve had to make the tough decisions. One of the messages that management
has consistently driven home to the teams is “cutting is shipping”, and they’re right.
If a feature isn’t coming together, it’s usually far better to decide NOT to deliver
a particular feature then to have that feature jeopardize the ability to ship the
whole system. In a typical Windows release there are thousands of features and it
would be a real shame if one or two of those features ended up delaying the entire
system because they really weren’t ready.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>The process of building 7 has also been dramatically more transparent – even sitting
at the bottom of the stack, I feel that I’ve got a good idea about how decisions are
being made. And that increased transparency in turn means that as an individual contributor
I’m able to make better decisions about scheduling. This transparency is actually
a direct fallout of management’s decision to let the various feature teams make their
own decisions – by letting the feature teams deeper inside the planning process, the
teams naturally make better decisions.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Of course that transparency works both ways. Not only were teams allowed to see
more about what was happening in the planning process, but because management introduced
standardized reporting mechanisms across the product, the leads at every level of
the hierarchy were able to track progress against plan at a level that we’ve never
had before. From an individual developer’s standpoint, the overhead wasn’t too onerous
– basically once a week, you were asked to update your progress against plan on each
of your work items. That status was then rolled up into a series of spreadsheets and
web pages that allowed each manager to track all the teams’ progress against plan.
This allowed management to easily and quickly identify which teams were having issues
and take appropriate action to ensure that the schedules were met (either by simplifying
designs, assigning more developers, or whatever).</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Transparency was also a cornerstone of Steven’s leadership style. The level of transparency
into the organization’s decision making process via formalized mechanisms as described
above as well as his personal decision making process has been unprecedented in my
experience at Microsoft. It may not be as transparent as <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/students/lifeatgoogle/culture/">Google’s
TGIF</a> but on the other hand, I don’t think there’s anywhere else at Microsoft where
visibility into how and why decisions are made was as clear as in the Windows organization.
</p>
<p>
At the end of the day, I’ll miss Steven and his influence on Microsoft. I’d like to
think I became a better manager and leader from my time working spent working in his
organization as well as the multiple exchanges we had over the years. Thanks for the
memories.
</p>
<p>
<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzL0EM1pKY">Fall Out Boy - Thnks
fr th Mmrs</a><img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=fc86f807-a40c-454e-8918-c77d509e7c77" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,fc86f807-a40c-454e-8918-c77d509e7c77.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaahttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaa.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaa.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaa2

Video of my talk “Powering your app with Live Services” from Microsoft BUILD conference now availablehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaa.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2011/09/17/VideoOfMyTalkPoweringYourAppWithLiveServicesFromMicrosoftBUILDConferenceNowAvailable.aspx
Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:45:30 GMT<p>
Yesterday I gave a talk about how Metro style apps and websites can take advantage
of the fact Single Sign On (SSO) with Windows Live ID in Windows 8, announced the
availability of <a href="http://connect.microsoft.com/site1226/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=7291&amp;pageType=1">the
Live SDK for Windows Developer Preview and Windows Phone</a> and demoed some of the
upcoming Windows Metro style apps that are built on the same platform. You can watch
the talk embedded below and you can <a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/APP-784T">go
here to download the video in various formats or download the slides</a>.
</p>
<iframe style="height: 544px; width: 960px" src="http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/BUILD/BUILD2011/APP-784T/player?w=960&amp;h=544" frameborder="0" scrolling="no">
</iframe>
<p>
<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=VIC&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">V.I.C.</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=VIC+Get+Silly&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">Get
Silly</a> <img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaa" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,a5e8a5c0-40ee-4c29-b4b9-aac84ab1beaa.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeProgramminghttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fahttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fa.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fa.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fa

I’m currently at the Microsoft BUILD conference where
I’m slated to talk about some of the work my team and others at Microsoft have done
in making it easy for Metro-style apps to leverage Live services like Windows Live
ID, SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Windows Live Messenger. I’ve been pretty busy at work as
regular readers of my blog can tell given my last post was in July. The past few months
have been exhilaratingly fun and crazy hectic as well. It’s great to finally be able
to share some of the work we’ve been doing with the world.

If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend visiting http://dev.live.com which
contains links to the Live SDK and talks about a number of key developer concepts
that were introduced in the Windows Developer Preview.

If you’re at the conference, I’d recommend attending my talk and some of the other
talks listed below

Power your app
with Live services
Windows 8 enables users to log into any device with a single Microsoft account and
continuously interact with your app on all of their devices. Your customers will expect
the ability to bring their documents, photos, videos, and contacts with them as they
move between their devices. Come see how you can enable great on-the-go experiences
by integrating Live services into your app. You’ll learn how to take advantage of
single sign on using a Microsoft account instead of creating your own authentication
infrastructure. You’ll also see how to use the SkyDrive service for free cloud-based
storage of your customers’ photos, videos, and documents. We’ll dive into the details
of the Live SDK and show how to use Visual Studio to easily enable these experiences

The complete developer's
guide to the SkyDrive API
More and more users are becoming familiar with the concept of "the Cloud."
More than ever, users are storing their data in the Cloud. SkyDrive is one of the
world's leading cloud storage and document collaboration services. Learn how you can
easily allow your users to read and write documents, photos, and other files from/to
their SkyDrive via simple REST APIs

Create experiences
that span devices
Your customers will expect your app to deliver a continuous experience even as they
switch between apps and move between their devices. Come learn how to ensure your
customers never lose their place in your app even when it is moved to the background
or accessed on a new device. You will also discover how to enable customers to personalize
your app with settings and ensure those settings flow automatically to all of their
devices. We will show you how you can enable this continuous, cloud-powered experience
with only a few lines of code.

If you missed the BUILD keynote yesterday and want a quick overview of what was released,
the 5 minute video below captures the highlights of the keynote

Single Sign On, SkyDrive APIs and More: Connecting your Windows 8 Metro-style apps to Windows Live #bldwinhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fa.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2011/09/14/SingleSignOnSkyDriveAPIsAndMoreConnectingYourWindows8MetrostyleAppsToWindowsLiveBldwin.aspx
Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:02:42 GMT<p>
I’m currently at the <a href="http://www.buildwindows.com/">Microsoft BUILD conference</a> where
I’m slated to talk about some of the work my team and others at Microsoft have done
in making it easy for Metro-style apps to leverage Live services like Windows Live
ID, SkyDrive, Hotmail, and Windows Live Messenger. I’ve been pretty busy at work as
regular readers of my blog can tell given my last post was in July. The past few months
have been exhilaratingly fun and crazy hectic as well. It’s great to finally be able
to share some of the work we’ve been doing with the world.
</p>
<p>
If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend visiting <a href="http://dev.live.com">http://dev.live.com</a> which
contains links to the Live SDK and talks about a number of key developer concepts
that were introduced in the Windows Developer Preview.
</p>
<p>
If you’re at the conference, I’d recommend attending my talk and some of the other
talks listed below
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/APP-784T">Power your app
with Live services</a>
<br />
Windows 8 enables users to log into any device with a single Microsoft account and
continuously interact with your app on all of their devices. Your customers will expect
the ability to bring their documents, photos, videos, and contacts with them as they
move between their devices. Come see how you can enable great on-the-go experiences
by integrating Live services into your app. You’ll learn how to take advantage of
single sign on using a Microsoft account instead of creating your own authentication
infrastructure. You’ll also see how to use the SkyDrive service for free cloud-based
storage of your customers’ photos, videos, and documents. We’ll dive into the details
of the Live SDK and show how to use Visual Studio to easily enable these experiences
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/PLAT-134C">The complete developer's
guide to the SkyDrive API</a>
<br />
More and more users are becoming familiar with the concept of &quot;the Cloud.&quot;
More than ever, users are storing their data in the Cloud. SkyDrive is one of the
world's leading cloud storage and document collaboration services. Learn how you can
easily allow your users to read and write documents, photos, and other files from/to
their SkyDrive via simple REST APIs
</p>
<p>
<a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/events/BUILD/BUILD2011/PLAT-475T">Create experiences
that span devices</a>
<br />
Your customers will expect your app to deliver a continuous experience even as they
switch between apps and move between their devices. Come learn how to ensure your
customers never lose their place in your app even when it is moved to the background
or accessed on a new device. You will also discover how to enable customers to personalize
your app with settings and ensure those settings flow automatically to all of their
devices. We will show you how you can enable this continuous, cloud-powered experience
with only a few lines of code.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
If you missed the BUILD keynote yesterday and want a quick overview of what was released,
the 5 minute video below captures the highlights of the keynote
</p>
<iframe height="345" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1Hq95vtoS28" frameborder="0" width="560" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen">
</iframe>
<p>
<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=Jay-Z+Kanye+West&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Jay-Z
and Kanye West</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=Jay-Z+kanye+West+Who+Gon+Stop+Me&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">Who
Gon Stop Me?</a>&#160;<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fa" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,55cae110-f7a7-4636-891e-ecca445432fa.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeProgramminghttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c7http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c7.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c7.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c74

Earlier this week, Microsoft took the initial wraps off of the next version of Windows
(aka "Windows 8"). As someone who loves personal computing and loves the
Web, there’s a lot I find exciting about what we just announced. The official announcement Previewing
‘Windows 8 states the following

The demo showed some of the ways we’ve reimagined the interface for a new generation
of touch-centric hardware. Fast, fluid and dynamic, the experience has been transformed
while keeping the power, flexibility and connectivity of Windows intact.

Here are a few aspects of the new interface we showed today:

• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows
Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.

• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you
can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.

• Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and
JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.

• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet
Explorer 10.…Today, we also talked a bit about how developers will build apps for the new system. Windows
8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using
standard JavaScript and HTML to deliver new kinds of experiences. These new
Windows 8 apps are full-screen and touch-optimized, and they easily integrate with
the capabilities of the new Windows user interface. There’s much more to the platform,
capabilities and tools than we showed today.…The video below introduces
a few of the basic elements of the new user interface. Although we have much more
to reveal at our developer event, BUILD (Sept.
13 - 16 in Anaheim, Calif.), we’re excited to share our progress with you.

If you’re a web developer this represents an amazing opportunity and one that should
fill you with excitement. Of course, you shouldn’t take the words of a Microsoft employee
but should also listen to what even people with cynical opinions of Microsoft are
saying such as Mike Mace in his article Windows
8: The Beginning of the End of Windows where he writes

So it's far too early to make any judgments on Windows 8, which Microsoft just
previewed (link).
There are an incredible number of ways it could go wrong.

But. I've got to say, this is the first time in years that I've been deeply
intrigued by something Microsoft announced. Not just because it looks cool (it
does), but because I think it shows clever business strategy on Microsoft's part.
And I can't even remember the last time I used the phrase "clever business strategy"
and Microsoft in the same sentence.…What it means to the rest of us
The history of platform transitions is that they are huge opportunities for developers.
They reset the playing field for apps and devices. Look at the history:
The leaders in DOS applications (Lotus, Word Perfect, etc) were second rate in GUI
software. The leaders in GUI apps (Adobe, Microsoft, etc) were not dominant
in the web. It's actually very rare for a software company that was successful
in the old paradigm to transfer that success to the new one. Similar turnover
has happened in hardware transitions (for example, Compaq rode the Intel 386 chip
to prominence over IBM in PCs). And yes, there is a hardware transition as part
of Windows 8, since it will now support ARM chips, and you'll want a touchscreen to
really take advantage of it.

So if you're running an existing PC hardware or software company, ask yourself
how a new competitor could use the platform transition to challenge your current products.
Here's a sobering thought to keep you awake tonight: the odds are that the challengers
will win. The company most at risk from this change is the largest vendor of
Windows apps, Microsoft itself. Microsoft Office must be completely rethought
for the new paradigm. You have about 18 months, guys. Good luck.

By the way, web companies are also at risk. Your web apps are designed for
a browser-centric, mouse-driven user experience. What happens to your app when
the browser melts into the OS, and the UI is driven by touch? If you think this
change doesn't affect you, I have an old copy of WordStar that you can play with.
Google and Facebook, I am talking to you.

You should read the rest of Mike’s post because it has an interesting perspective.
I strongly believe in the core premise of the article that Windows 8 is disruptive.
Not only is it disruptive to the software industry as a whole but it will be disruptive
even for the way Microsoft does business today. When Steve Ballmer said Windows
8 will be Microsoft's riskiest product bet he wasn’t kidding.

Out of disruption comes opportunity and if you’re a web developer you have a front
row seat in taking advantage of this opportunity. Don’t waste it. You should register
for the BUILD conference. I’ll be there and with any luck I may even get to give
a talk or two. See you there.

BUILD: I’ll be there and if you’re a web developer you should be toohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c7.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2011/06/03/BUILDIllBeThereAndIfYoureAWebDeveloperYouShouldBeToo.aspx
Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:44:14 GMT<p>
Earlier this week, Microsoft took the initial wraps off of the next version of Windows
(aka &quot;Windows 8&quot;). As someone who loves personal computing and loves the
Web, there’s a lot I find exciting about what we just announced. The official announcement <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx?wt.mc_id=Win8_D9">Previewing
‘Windows 8</a> states the following
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>The demo showed some of the ways we’ve reimagined the interface for a new generation
of touch-centric hardware. Fast, fluid and dynamic, the experience has been transformed
while keeping the power, flexibility and connectivity of Windows intact.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Here are a few aspects of the new interface we showed today:</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>• Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows
Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>• Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your
apps.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>• Fluid, natural switching between running apps.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>• Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you
can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>• <font color="#ff0000">Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and
JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.</font></em>
</p>
<p>
<em>• Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet
Explorer 10.</em>
<br />
<em>…</em>
<br />
<em>Today, we also talked a bit about how developers will build apps for the new system. <font color="#ff0000">Windows
8 apps use the power of HTML5, tapping into the native capabilities of Windows using
standard JavaScript and HTML to deliver new kinds of experiences</font>. These new
Windows 8 apps are full-screen and touch-optimized, and they easily integrate with
the capabilities of the new Windows user interface. There’s much more to the platform,
capabilities and tools than we showed today.</em>
<br />
<em>…</em>
<br />
<em>The </em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I"><em>video below</em></a><em> introduces
a few of the basic elements of the new user interface. Although we have much more
to reveal at our developer event, </em><a href="http://www.buildwindows.com/"><em>BUILD</em></a><em> (Sept.
13 - 16 in Anaheim, Calif.), we’re excited to share our progress with you.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
If you’re a web developer this represents an amazing opportunity and one that should
fill you with excitement. Of course, you shouldn’t take the words of a Microsoft employee
but should also listen to what even people with cynical opinions of Microsoft are
saying such as Mike Mace in his article <a href="http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2011/06/windows-8-beginning-of-end-of-windows.html">Windows
8: The Beginning of the End of Windows</a> where he writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>So it's far too early to make any judgments on Windows 8, which Microsoft just
previewed (</em><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p92QfWOw88I"><em>link</em></a><em>).&#160;
There are an incredible number of ways it could go wrong.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>But.&#160; I've got to say, this is the first time in years that I've been deeply
intrigued by something Microsoft announced.&#160; Not just because it looks cool (it
does), but because I think it shows clever business strategy on Microsoft's part.&#160;
And I can't even remember the last time I used the phrase &quot;clever business strategy&quot;
and Microsoft in the same sentence.</em>
<br />
<em>…</em>
<br />
<em><b>What it means to the rest of us</b>
<br />
The history of platform transitions is that they are huge opportunities for developers.&#160;
They reset the playing field for apps and devices.&#160; Look at the history:&#160;
The leaders in DOS applications (Lotus, Word Perfect, etc) were second rate in GUI
software.&#160; The leaders in GUI apps (Adobe, Microsoft, etc) were not dominant
in the web.&#160; It's actually very rare for a software company that was successful
in the old paradigm to transfer that success to the new one.&#160; Similar turnover
has happened in hardware transitions (for example, Compaq rode the Intel 386 chip
to prominence over IBM in PCs).&#160; And yes, there is a hardware transition as part
of Windows 8, since it will now support ARM chips, and you'll want a touchscreen to
really take advantage of it. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>So if you're running an existing PC hardware or software company, ask yourself
how a new competitor could use the platform transition to challenge your current products.&#160;
Here's a sobering thought to keep you awake tonight: the odds are that the challengers
will win.&#160; The company most at risk from this change is the largest vendor of
Windows apps, Microsoft itself.&#160; Microsoft Office must be completely rethought
for the new paradigm.&#160; You have about 18 months, guys.&#160; Good luck. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>By the way, web companies are also at risk.&#160; Your web apps are designed for
a browser-centric, mouse-driven user experience.&#160; What happens to your app when
the browser melts into the OS, and the UI is driven by touch?&#160; If you think this
change doesn't affect you, I have an old copy of WordStar that you can play with.&#160;
Google and Facebook, I am talking to you.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
You should read the rest of Mike’s post because it has an interesting perspective.
I strongly believe in the core premise of the article that Windows 8 is disruptive.
Not only is it disruptive to the software industry as a whole but it will be disruptive
even for the way Microsoft does business today. When Steve Ballmer said <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/23/ballmer-next-release-of-windows-will-be-microsofts-riskiest-p/">Windows
8 will be Microsoft's riskiest product bet</a> he wasn’t kidding.
</p>
<p>
Out of disruption comes opportunity and if you’re a web developer you have a front
row seat in taking advantage of this opportunity. Don’t waste it. You should <a href="http://www.buildwindows.com/register">register
for the BUILD conference</a>. I’ll be there and with any luck I may even get to give
a talk or two. See you there.&#160;
</p>
<p>
<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=Jay-Z&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Jay-Z</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=Jay-Z+On+To+The+Next+One&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">On
To The Next One (featuring Swizz Beats)</a><img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c7" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,7b61bc6b-a04d-49ab-9fb7-6ab66d4c21c7.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeWeb Developmenthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=0cd1fcc6-b156-4bdb-810b-688c01c9dd9bhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,0cd1fcc6-b156-4bdb-810b-688c01c9dd9b.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,0cd1fcc6-b156-4bdb-810b-688c01c9dd9b.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=0cd1fcc6-b156-4bdb-810b-688c01c9dd9b16Lessons from Google Wave and REST vs. SOAP: Fighting Complexity of our own Choosinghttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,0cd1fcc6-b156-4bdb-810b-688c01c9dd9b.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2010/08/27/LessonsFromGoogleWaveAndRESTVsSOAPFightingComplexityOfOurOwnChoosing.aspx
Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:30:17 GMT<p>
Software companies love hiring people that like solving hard technical problems. On
the surface this seems like a good idea, unfortunately it can lead to situations where
you have people building a product where they focus more on the interesting technical
challenges they can solve as opposed to whether their product is actually solving
problems for their customers.
</p>
<p>
I started being reminded of this after reading an answer to a question on Quora about <a href="http://www.quora.com/Which-is-better-to-work-for-Google-or-Facebook">the
difference between working at Google versus Facebook</a> where <strike>Edmond Lau</strike> David
Braginsky wrote
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em><b>Culture:
<br />
</b>Google is like grad-school. People value working on hard problems, and doing them
right. Things are pretty polished, the code is usually solid, and the systems are
designed for scale from the very beginning. There are many experts around and review
processes set up for systems designs. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Facebook is more like undergrad. Something needs to be done, and people do it.
Most of the time they don't read the literature on the subject, or consult experts
about the "right way" to do it, they just sit down, write the code, and make things
work. Sometimes the way they do it is naive, and a lot of time it may cause bugs or
break as it goes into production. And when that happens, they fix their problems,
replace bottlenecks with scalable components, and (in most cases) move on to the next
thing. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Google tends to value technology. Things are often done because they are technically
hard or impressive. On most projects, the engineers make the calls. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Facebook values products and user experience, and designers tend to have a much
larger impact. Zuck spends a lot of time looking at product mocks, and is involved
pretty deeply with the site's look and feel.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
It should be noted that Google deserves credit for succeeding where other large software
have mostly failed in putting a bunch of throwing a bunch of Ph.Ds at a problem at
actually having them create products that impacts hundreds of millions people as opposed
to research papers that impress hundreds of their colleagues. That said, it is easy
to see the impact of complexophiles (props to <a href="http://addysanto.com/">Addy
Santo</a>) in recent products like Google Wave.
</p>
<p>
If you go back and read the <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/went-walkabout-brought-back-google-wave.html">Google
Wave announcement blog post</a> it is interesting to note the focus on combining features
from disparate use cases and the diversity of all of the technical challenges involved
at once including
</p>
<ul>
<li>
“Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content —
it allows for both collaboration and communication”
</li>
<li>
“It's an HTML 5 app, built on <a href="http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/">Google
Web Toolkit</a>. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop”
</li>
<li>
“The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing
waves, and includes the ‘live’ concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected
instantly across users and services”
</li>
<li>
“The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone's Wave services can
interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service”
</li>
<li>
“Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow
developers to embed waves in other web services”
</li>
</ul>
<p>
The product announcement read more like a technology showcase than an announcement
for a product that is actually meant to help people communicate, collaborate or make
their lives better in any way. This is an example of a product where smart people
spent a lot of time working on hard problems but at the end of the day they <a href="http://www.techmeme.com/100804/p57#a100804p57">didn't
see the adoption they would have liked</a> because they they spent more time focusing
on technical challenges than ensuring they were building the right product.
</p>
<p>
It is interesting to think about all the internal discussions and time spent implementing
features like character-by-character typing without anyone bothering to ask whether
that feature actually makes sense for a product that is billed as a replacement to
email. I often write emails where I write a snarky comment then edit it out when I
reconsider the wisdom of sending that out to a broad audience. It’s not a feature
that anyone wants for people to actually see that authoring process.
</p>
<hr />
<p>
Some of you may remember that there was a time when I was <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20040715004553/msdn.microsoft.com/xml/default.aspx">literally
the face of XML at Microsoft</a> (i.e. going to <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/xml">http://www.microsoft.com/xml</a> took
you to a page with my face on it <img alt="Smile" src="http://shared.live.com/5oeCPTazLAJxhccDO!c5Cg/emoticons/smile_regular.gif" />).
In those days I spent a lot of time using phrases like the XML<->
objects impedance mismatch to describe the fact that the dominate type system for
the dominant protocol for web services at the time (aka <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/">SOAP</a>)
actually had lots of constructs that you don’t map well to a traditional object oriented
programming language like C# or Java. This was caused by the fact that XML had grown
to serve conflicting masters. There were people who used it as a basis for document
formats such as <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">DocBook</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML">XHTML</a>.
Then there were the people who saw it as a replacement to for the binary protocols
used in interoperable remote procedure call technologies such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORBA">CORBA</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_remote_method_invocation">Java
RMI</a>. The W3C decided to solve this problem by getting a bunch of really smart
people in a room and asking them to create some amalgam type system that would solve
both sets of completely different requirements. The output of this activity was <a href="http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema">XML
Schema</a> which became the type system for SOAP, WSDL and the WS-* family of technologies.
This meant that people who simply wanted a way to define how to serialize a C# object
in a way that it could be consumed by a Java method call ended up with a type system
that was also meant to be able to describe the structural rules of the HTML in this
blog post.
</p>
<p>
Thousands of man years of effort was spent across companies like Sun Microsystems,
Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and BEA to develop toolkits on top of a protocol stack that
had this fundamental technical challenge baked into it. Of course, everyone had a
different way of trying to address this “XML<->
object impedance mismatch which led to interoperability issues in what was meant to
be a protocol stack that guaranteed interoperability. Eventually customers started
telling their horror stories in actually using these technologies to interoperate
such as Nelson Minar’s <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2005/03/17/ETech2005TripReportBuildingANewWebServiceAtGoogle.aspx">ETech
2005 Talk - Building a New Web Service at Google</a> and movement around the usage
of building web services using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REST">Representational
State Transfer (REST)</a> was born. In tandem, web developers realized that if your
problem is moving programming language objects around, then perhaps a data format
that was designed for that is the preferred choice. Today, it is hard to find any
recently broadly deployed web service that doesn’t utilize on <a href="http://json.org/">Javascript
Object Notation (JSON)</a> as opposed to SOAP.
</p>
<hr />
<p>
The moral of both of these stories is that a lot of the time in software it is easy
to get lost in the weeds solving hard technical problems that are due to complexity
we’ve imposed on ourselves due to some well meaning design decision instead of actually
solving customer problems. The trick is being able to detect when you’re in that situation
and seeing if altering some of your base assumptions doesn’t lead to a lot of simplification
of your problem space then frees you up to actually spend time solving real customer
problems and delighting your users. More people need to ask themselves questions like
do I really need to use the same type system and data format for business documents
AND serialized objects from programming languages?
</p>
<p>
<img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&unfiltered=1&field-keywords=&field-artist=Travie+McCoy&field-title=Billionaire&field-label=&field-binding=&sort=relevancerank&Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Travie
McCoy</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=Travie+McCoy+Billionaire&x=0&y=0">Billionaire
(featuring Bruno Mars)</a> <img title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/images/music_note.gif" />
</p>
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A few days ago someone asked how long I've been at Microsoft and I was surprised to
hear myself say about 7 years. I hadn't consciously thought about it for a while but
my 7th anniversary at the company is coming up in a few weeks. I spent a few days
afterwards wondering if I have a seven
year itch and thinking about what I want to do next in my career.

I realized that I couldn't be happier right now. I get to build the core platform
that powers the social software experience for half
a billion users with a great product team (dev, test, ops) and very supportive
management all the way up the chain. This hasn't always been the case.

I went through my seven year itch period about two years ago. I had always planned
for my career at Microsoft to be short since I've never considered myself to be a
big company person. Around that time, I looked around at a couple of places both within
and outside Microsoft. I had some surprisingly good hiring experiences and some that
were surprisingly bad (as bad as this
thread makes the Google hiring process seem, trust me it is worse than that) then
came away with a surprising conclusion. The best place to build the kind of software
I wanted to build was at Microsoft. I started working in online services at Microsoft
because I believed Social
Software is the Platform of the Future and wanted to build social experiences
that influence how millions of people connect with each other. What I realized after
my quick look around at other opportunities is that no one has more potential in this
space than Microsoft. Today when I read articles
about our recent release, it validates my belief that Microsoft will be the company
to watch when it comes to bringing "social" to software in a big way.

~

In my almost seven years in the software industry, I've had a number of friends go
through the sense of needing change or career dissatisfaction which leads to the seven
year itch. Both at Microsoft and elsewhere. Some of them have ended up dealing with
this poorly and eventual became disgruntled and unhappy with their jobs which turns
into a vicious cycle. On the other hand, I know a bunch of people that went
from being unhappy or disgruntled about their jobs to becoming happy and productive
employees who are more satisfied with their career choices. For the latter class of
people, here are the three most successful, proactive steps I've seen them make

Change your perspective: Sometimes employees fall into situations where the
reality for working on product X or team Y at company Z is different from their expectations.
It could be a difference in development philosophy (e.g. the employee likes Agile
practices like SCRUM and the product team does not practice them), technology choice
(e.g. wanting to use the latest technologies whereas the product team has a legacy
product in C++ with millions of customers) or one of many other differences in expectations
versus reality.

The realization that leads to satisfaction in this case is that it isn't necessarily
the case that what the organization is doing is wrong (e.g. rewriting an app from
scratch just to use the latest technologies is never a good idea), it's just that
what the employee would prefer isn't a realistic option for the organization or is
just a matter of personal preference (e.g. the goal of the organization is to deliver
a product on time and under budget not to use a specific development practice). Of
course, these are contrived examples but the key point should be clear. If you're
unhappy because your organization doesn't meet your expectations it could be that
your expectations are what needs adjusting.

Change your organization: As the Mahatma Gandhi quote goes, Be
the change you wish to see in the world. Every organization can be changed from
within. After all, a lot of the most successful projects at Microsoft and around the
software industry came about because a passionate person had a dream and did the leg
work to convince enough people to share that dream. Where people often stumble is
in underestimating the amount of leg work it takes to convince people to share their
dream (and sometimes this leg work may mean writing a lot of code or doing a lot of
research). .

Change your job: In some cases, there are irreconcilable differences between
an employee and the organization they work for. The employee may have lost faith in
the planned direction of the product, the product's management team or the entire
company as a whole. In such cases the best thing to do is to part ways amicably before
things go south.

Being on an H-1B visa I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about being the equivalent
of an indentured servant when working for an American software company but this has
proven to be far from the truth. There is an H-1B
transfer process that allows you to switch employers without having to re-apply
for a visa or even inform your current employer. If you work at a big company and
are paper-work averse, you can stick to switching teams within the company. This is
especially true for Microsoft where there are hundreds of very different products
(operating systems, databases, Web search engines, video game console hardware, social
networking software, IT, web design, billing software, etc) with very different cultures
to choose from.

These are the steps that I've seen work for friends and coworkers who've been unhappy
in their jobs who've successfully been able to change their circumstances. The people
who don't figure out how to execute one of the steps above eventually become embittered
and are never a joy to be around.

Dealing with the Seven Year Itch, Working at Microsoft and a few thoughts on the Google Hiring Processhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b9fbdafa-60d7-4bf8-9860-8a0b7a4420e4.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2009/01/18/DealingWithTheSevenYearItchWorkingAtMicrosoftAndAFewThoughtsOnTheGoogleHiringProcess.aspx
Sun, 18 Jan 2009 18:03:26 GMT<p>
A few days ago someone asked how long I've been at Microsoft and I was surprised to
hear myself say about 7 years. I hadn't consciously thought about it for a while but
my 7th anniversary at the company is coming up in a few weeks. I spent a few days
afterwards wondering if I have a <a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/seven-year-itch.html">seven
year itch</a> and thinking about what I want to do next in my career.&#160;
</p>
<p>
I realized that I couldn't be happier right now. I get to build the core platform
that powers the social software experience for <a href="http://twitter.com/anguslogan/status/1103481760">half
a billion users</a> with a great product team (dev, test, ops) and very supportive
management all the way up the chain. This hasn't always been the case.&#160;
</p>
<p>
I went through my seven year itch period about two years ago. I had always planned
for my career at Microsoft to be short since I've never considered myself to be a
big company person. Around that time, I looked around at a couple of places both within
and outside Microsoft. I had some surprisingly good hiring experiences and some that
were surprisingly bad (as bad as <a title="TechCrunch: Why Google Employees Quit" href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/">this
thread</a> makes the Google hiring process seem, trust me it is worse than that) then
came away with a surprising conclusion. The best place to build the kind of software
I wanted to build was at Microsoft. I started working in online services at Microsoft
because I believed <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2004/10/06/SocialSoftwareIsThePlatformOfTheFuture.aspx">Social
Software is the Platform of the Future</a> and wanted to build social experiences
that influence how millions of people connect with each other. What I realized after
my quick look around at other opportunities is that no one has more potential in this
space than Microsoft. Today when I read <a title="Microsoft Beats Yahoo and Google to Social Inbox 2.0" href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/microsoft-beats-yahoo-and-google-to-social-inbox-20/">articles
about our recent release</a>, it validates my belief that Microsoft will be the company
to watch when it comes to bringing &quot;social&quot; to software in a big way.&#160;
</p>
<p>
~
</p>
<p>
In my almost seven years in the software industry, I've had a number of friends go
through the sense of needing change or career dissatisfaction which leads to the seven
year itch. Both at Microsoft and elsewhere. Some of them have ended up dealing with
this poorly and eventual became disgruntled and unhappy with their jobs which turns
into a vicious cycle.&#160; On the other hand, I know a bunch of people that went
from being unhappy or disgruntled about their jobs to becoming happy and productive
employees who are more satisfied with their career choices. For the latter class of
people, here are the three most successful, proactive steps I've seen them make
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>
<u>Change your perspective:</u> Sometimes employees fall into situations where the
reality for working on product X or team Y at company Z is different from their expectations.
It could be a difference in development philosophy (e.g. the employee likes Agile
practices like SCRUM and the product team does not practice them), technology choice
(e.g. wanting to use the latest technologies whereas the product team has a legacy
product in C++ with millions of customers) or one of many other differences in expectations
versus reality.
</p>
<p>
The realization that leads to satisfaction in this case is that it isn't necessarily
the case that what the organization is doing is wrong (e.g. rewriting an app from
scratch just to use the latest technologies is never a good idea), it's just that
what the employee would prefer isn't a realistic option for the organization or is
just a matter of personal preference (e.g. the goal of the organization is to deliver
a product on time and under budget not to use a specific development practice). Of
course, these are contrived examples but the key point should be clear. If you're
unhappy because your organization doesn't meet your expectations it could be that
your expectations are what needs adjusting.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Change your organization:</u> As the Mahatma Gandhi quote goes, <a title="Mahatma Gandhi quotes" href="http://quotations.about.com/od/stillmorefamouspeople/a/MahatmaGandhi1.htm">Be
the change you wish to see in the world</a>. Every organization can be changed from
within. After all, a lot of the most successful projects at Microsoft and around the
software industry came about because a passionate person had a dream and did the leg
work to convince enough people to share that dream. Where people often stumble is
in underestimating the amount of leg work it takes to convince people to share their
dream (and sometimes this leg work may mean writing a lot of code or doing a lot of
research). .
</p>
<p>
For example, when you go from reading Harvard Business School articles like <a href="http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4834.html">Microsoft
vs. Open Source: Who Will Win?</a> in 2005 to seeing an <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/">Open
Source at Microsoft portal</a> in 2008, you have to wonder what happens behind the
scenes to cause that sort of change. It took the prodding of a number of <a href="http://www.iunknown.com/2008/03/open-source-amb.html">passionate
Open Source ambassadors at Microsoft</a> as well as other influences to get this to
happen.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Change your job:</u> In some cases, there are irreconcilable differences between
an employee and the organization they work for. The employee may have lost faith in
the planned direction of the product, the product's management team or the entire
company as a whole. In such cases the best thing to do is to part ways amicably before
things go south.
</p>
<p>
Being on an H-1B visa I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about being the equivalent
of an indentured servant when working for an American software company but this has
proven to be far from the truth. There is an <a href="http://www.immspec.com/h-1b-visa-transfer.htm">H-1B
transfer process</a> that allows you to switch employers without having to re-apply
for a visa or even inform your current employer. If you work at a big company and
are paper-work averse, you can stick to switching teams within the company. This is
especially true for Microsoft where there are hundreds of very different products
(operating systems, databases, Web search engines, video game console hardware, social
networking software, IT, web design, billing software, etc) with very different cultures
to choose from.
</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>
These are the steps that I've seen work for friends and coworkers who've been unhappy
in their jobs who've successfully been able to change their circumstances. The people
who don't figure out how to execute one of the steps above eventually become embittered
and are never a joy to be around.
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
<img style="vertical-align: middle" title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://shared.live.com/HjKMzTS-xzcms40%21CabizA/emoticons/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=Estelle (feat. Kanye West)&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Estelle
(feat. Kanye West)</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=Estelle (feat. Kanye West)+American Boy &amp;x=0&amp;y=0">American
Boy </a><img style="vertical-align: middle" title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://shared.live.com/HjKMzTS-xzcms40%21CabizA/emoticons/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=b9fbdafa-60d7-4bf8-9860-8a0b7a4420e4" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b9fbdafa-60d7-4bf8-9860-8a0b7a4420e4.aspxLife in the B0rg CubePersonalhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf6http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf6.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf6.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf63

The team I work for is responsible for the "social graph", "news feed"
and online presence platforms that power various Windows Live experiences. You can
see some of our recent efforts in action by downloading Windows
Live Essentials (beta) or visiting my
profile on Windows Live and browsing around. If you are interested in building
world class software that is used by hundreds of millions of people and the
following job descriptions interest you then send me your resume

The Windows Live Messenger service is the backbone of one of world’s leading instant
messaging services. The service enables hundreds of millions of users to communicate
efficiently using text, voice, video and real-time status updates. This high-profile
business is growing to accommodate mobile devices, social networking, web applications
and other new areas.
We are seeking a developer with a fondness and talent for working on large-scale fault-tolerant
distributed systems. The job involves working on the back-end components that maintain
user state and route messages and notifications. In addition to improving the systems
performance and resiliency, our team will tackle hard new problems such as
- Supporting new ways of addressing users (personas or aliases)
- Extending user state to support offline presence and presence views
- Creating a generic notification service
- implementing effective request throttling and load-balancing across datacenters.

Looking for your next big challenge? How about building the next version of the world’s
largest IM and social network platform?
We are looking for a great SDET with solid design, problem solving skills and exceptional
track record to help build the next version of Windows Live Messenger and Social Network
platform. The Messenger network is already one of the largest social networks on the
planet, delivering BILLIONS of messages a day for HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of users world-wide.
The SDET role involves working on these next-generation services and proving they
can be delivered to the massive scale required, with the quality our users have come
to expect. Particular focus areas for this role are scalability, performance and reliability:
Scalability - building software systems to take each piece of hardware to its limits,
identifying bottlenecks, removing them and pushing harder; while also, proving the
system can grow linearly, as hardware is added. (…think 1,000s of machines).
Performance - ensuring consistently fast response times across the system by smoothly
managing peak traffic -- which averages in the 10s of millions of simultaneous online
connections.
Reliability - building online services that remain reliable under stress which the
operations team is able to easily monitor, troubleshoot, and repair; enabling the
aggressive up time requirements we aim for.

Email your resume to dareo@msft.com (replace msft
with microsoft) if the above job descriptions sound like they are a good fit for you.
If you have any questions about what working here is like, you can send me an email
and I'll either follow up via email or my blog to answer any questions of general
interest [within reason].

Wanna Work With Me?http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf6.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/12/17/WannaWorkWithMe.aspx
Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:58:00 GMT<p>
Reading depressing layoff related blog posts like George Oates's <a href="http://george08.blogspot.com/2008/12/not-quite-what-i-had-in-mind.html">Not
quite what I had in mind</a> and the Valley Wag's <a href="http://valleywag.com/5111818/laid+off-yahoos-packing-heat-for-jerry-yang">Laid-off
Yahoos packing heat for Jerry Yang?</a> reminded me that I've been meaning to post
about open positions on our team for a while.
</p>
<p>
The team I work for is responsible for the &quot;social graph&quot;, &quot;news feed&quot;
and online presence platforms that power various Windows Live experiences. You can
see some of our recent efforts in action by downloading <a href="http://download.live.com">Windows
Live Essentials</a> (beta) or visiting <a target="_blank" href="http://cid-616444ee7a34f417.profile.live.com">my
profile on Windows Live</a> and browsing around. If you are interested in building
world class software that is used by <u>hundreds of millions of people</u> and the
following job descriptions interest you then send me your resume&#160;
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<strong><a href="http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=12654948-CF1D-47FE-9930-57837E335D0E">Software
Design Engineer (Developer)</a></strong>
</p>
<p>
The Windows Live Messenger service is the backbone of one of world’s leading instant
messaging services. The service enables hundreds of millions of users to communicate
efficiently using text, voice, video and real-time status updates. This high-profile
business is growing to accommodate mobile devices, social networking, web applications
and other new areas.
<br />
We are seeking a developer with a fondness and talent for working on large-scale fault-tolerant
distributed systems. The job involves working on the back-end components that maintain
user state and route messages and notifications. In addition to improving the systems
performance and resiliency, our team will tackle hard new problems such as
<br />
- Supporting new ways of addressing users (personas or aliases)
<br />
- Extending user state to support offline presence and presence views
<br />
- Creating a generic notification service
<br />
- implementing effective request throttling and load-balancing across datacenters.
</p>
<p>
<strong><a href="http://members.microsoft.com/careers/search/details.aspx?JobID=1CA00765-B7B0-4CEA-969E-CA8F27FCB79A">Software
Design Engineer/Test (Tester)</a></strong>
</p>
<p>
Looking for your next big challenge? How about building the next version of the world’s
largest IM and social network platform?
<br />
We are looking for a great SDET with solid design, problem solving skills and exceptional
track record to help build the next version of Windows Live Messenger and Social Network
platform. The Messenger network is already one of the largest social networks on the
planet, delivering BILLIONS of messages a day for HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of users world-wide.
<br />
The SDET role involves working on these next-generation services and proving they
can be delivered to the massive scale required, with the quality our users have come
to expect. Particular focus areas for this role are scalability, performance and reliability:
<br />
Scalability - building software systems to take each piece of hardware to its limits,
identifying bottlenecks, removing them and pushing harder; while also, proving the
system can grow linearly, as hardware is added. (…think 1,000s of machines).
<br />
Performance - ensuring consistently fast response times across the system by smoothly
managing peak traffic -- which averages in the 10s of millions of simultaneous online
connections.
<br />
Reliability - building online services that remain reliable under stress which the
operations team is able to easily monitor, troubleshoot, and repair; enabling the
aggressive up time requirements we aim for.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Email your resume to <a href="mailto:dareo@msft.com">dareo@msft.com</a> (replace msft
with microsoft) if the above job descriptions sound like they are a good fit for you.
If you have any questions about what working here is like, you can send me an email
and I'll either follow up via email or my blog to answer any questions of general
interest [within reason].
</p>
<p>
<img style="vertical-align: middle" title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://shared.live.com/HjKMzTS-xzcms40%21CabizA/emoticons/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=Rascal Flatts&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Rascal
Flatts</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=Rascal Flatts+Fast Cars and Freedom&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">Fast
Cars and Freedom</a> <img style="vertical-align: middle" title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://shared.live.com/HjKMzTS-xzcms40%21CabizA/emoticons/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf6" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,9be4f0cc-039d-4a5a-9eec-d61ef26badf6.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeWindows Livehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39dhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39d.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39d.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39d10

Disclaimer: What follows are my personal impressions from using the beta
version of Windows Azure. It is not meant to be an official description of the project
from Microsoft, you can find that here.

Earlier this week I scored an invite to try out the beta version of Windows
Azure which is a new hosted services (aka cloud computing) platform from Microsoft.
Since there's been a ridiculous amount
of press about the project I was interested in actually trying it out by developing
and deploying some code using this platform and sharing my experiences with others.

What is it?

Before talking about a cloud computing platform, it is useful to agree on definitions
of the term cloud computing. Tim O'Reilly has an excellent post entitled Web
2.0 and Cloud Computing where he breaks the technologies typically described as
cloud computing into three broad categories

Utility Computing: In this approach, a vendor provides access to virtual server
instances where each instance runs a traditional server operating system such as Linux
or Windows Server. Computation and storage resources are metered and the customer
can "scale infinitely" by simply creating new server instances. The most
popular example of this approach is Amazon EC2.

Platform as a Service: In this approach, a vendor abstracts away the notion
of accessing traditional
LAMP
or
WISC
stacks from their customers and instead provides an environment for running programs
written using a particular platform. In addition, data storage is provided via a custom
storage layer and API instead of traditional relational database access. The most
popular example of this approach is Google
App Engine.

Cloud-based end user applications: This typically refers to Web-based applications
that have previously been provided as desktop or server based applications. Examples
include Google Docs, Salesforce and Hotmail.
Technically every Web application falls under this category, however the term often
isn't used that inclusively.

With these definitions clearly stated it is easier to talk about what Windows Azure
is and is not. Windows Azure is currently #2; a Platform as a Service offering. Although
there have been numerous references to Amazon's offerings both by Microsoft and bloggers
covering the Azure announcements, Windows Azure is not a utility computing offering
[as defined above].

There has definitely been some confusion about this as evidenced by Dave Winer's post Microsoft's
cloud strategy? and commentary from other sources.

After this process, you should be able to fire up Visual Studio and see the option
to create a Cloud Service if you go to File->New->Project.

Building Cloud-based Applications with Azure

The diagram below taken from the Windows Azure SDK shows the key participants in a
typical Windows Azure service

The work units that make up a Windows Azure hosted service can have one of two roles.
A Web role is an application that listens for and responds to Web requests while a
Worker role is a background processing task which acts autonomously but cannot be
accessed over the Web. A Windows Azure application can have multiple instances of
Web and Worker roles that make up the service. For example, if I was developing a
Web-based RSS reader I would need a worker role for polling feeds and Web role for
displaying the UI that the user interacts with. Both Web and Worker roles are .NET
applications that can be developed locally and then deployed on Microsoft's servers
when they are ready to go.

Azure applications have access to a storage layer that provides the following three
storage services

Blob Storage: This is used for storing binary data. A user account can have
one or more containers which in turn can contain one or more blobs of binary data.
Containers cannot be nested so one cannot create hierarchical folder structures. However
Azure allows applications to work around this by (i) allowing applications to query
containers based on substring matching on prefixes and (ii) delimiters such as '\'
and other path characters are valid blob names. So I can create blobs with names like
'mypics\wife.jpg' and 'mypics\son.jpg' in the media container and then query for blobs
beginning with 'mypics\' thus simulating a folder hierarchy somewhat.

Queue Service: This is a straightforward message queuing service. A user account
can have one or more queues from which they can add items to the end of each queue
and remove items from the front. Items have a maximum time-to-live of 7 days within
the queue. When an item is retrieved from the queue, an associated 'pop receipt' is
provided. The item is then hidden from other client applications until some interval
(by default 30 seconds) has passed after which the item becomes visible. The item
can be deleted from the queue during that interval if the pop receipt from when it
was retrieved is provided as part of the DELETE operation. The queue service
is valuable as a way for Web roles to talk to Worker roles and vice versa.

Table Storage: This exposes a subset of the capabilities of the ADO.NET
Data Services Framework (aka Astoria). In general, this is a schema-less table
based model similar to Google's
BigTable and Amazon's SimpleDB.
The data model consists of tables and entities (aka rows). Each entity has a primary
key made of two parts {PartitionKey, RowKey}, a last modified timestamp and an arbitrary
number of user-defined properties. Properties can be one of several primitive types
including integer, strings, doubles, long integers, GUIDs, booleans and binary. Like
Astoria, the Table Storage service supports performing LINQ queries on rows but only
supports the FROM, WHERE and TAKE operators. Other differences from Astoria are that
it doesn't support batch operations nor is it possible to retrieve individual properties
from an entity without retrieving the entire entity.

These storage services are accessible to any HTTP client and not just Azure applications.

Deploying Cloud-based Applications with Azure

The following diagram taken from the Windows Azure SDK shows the development lifecycle
of an Windows Azure application

The SDK ships with a development fabric which enables you to deploy an Azure an application
locally via IIS 7.0 and development storage which uses SQL Server Express as a storage
layer which mimics the Windows Azure storage services.

As the diagram shows above, once the application is tested locally it can be deployed
entirely or in part on Microsoft's storage and cloud computation services.

In addition to Windows Azure, Microsoft also announced the Azure
Services Platform which is a variety of Web APIs and Web Services that can be
used in combination with Windows Azure (or by themselves) to build cloud-based applications.
Each of these Web services is worthy of its own post (or whitepaper and O'Reilly animal
book) but I'll limit myself to one sentence descriptions for now.

Live Services: A set of REST APIs for consumer-centric data types (e.g. calendar,
profile, etc) and scenarios (communication, presence, sync, etc). You can see the
set of APIs in the Live
Framework poster and keep up with the goings on by following the Live
Services blogs.

Microsoft .NET Services: Three fairly different services for now; hosted access
control, hosted workflow engine and a service bus in the cloud. Boring enterprise
stuff. :)

Microsoft Sharepoint Services: I couldn't figure out if anything concrete was
announced here or whether stuff was pre-announced (i.e. actual announcement to come
at a later date).

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services: Ditto.

From the above list, I find the Live Services piece (access to user data in a uniform
way) and the SQL Services (hosted storage) most interesting. I will likely revisit
them in more depth at a later date.

The Bottom Line

From my perspective, Windows Azure is easiest viewed as a competitor to Google
App Engine. As comparisons go, Azure already brings a number of features to the
table that aren't even on the Google
App Engine road map. The key important feature is the ability to run background
tasks instead of just being limited to writing applications that respond to Web requests.
This limitation of App Engine means you can't write any application that does any
serious background computation like a search engine, email service, or RSS reader
on Google App Engine. So Azure can run an entire class of applications that are simply not
possible on Google App Engine.

The second key feature is that by supporting the .NET Framework, developers theoretically get
a plethora of languages to choose from including Ruby (IronRuby), Python (IronPython),
F#, VB.NET and C#. In practice, the Azure SDK only supports creating cloud applications
using C# and VB.NET out of the box. However I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't
be able to support development with other .NET enabled languages like IronPython.
On the flipside, App Engine only supports Python and the timeline for it supporting
other languages [and exactly which other languages] is still To Be Determined.

Azure makes it possible for me to reuse my existing skills as a .NET developer who
is savvy with using RESTful APIs to build cloud based applications without having
to worry about scalability concerns (e.g. database sharding, replication strategies,
server failover, etc). In addition, it puts pressure on competitors to step up to
the plate and deliver. However you look at it, this is a massive WIN for Web developers.

The two small things I'd love to see addressed are first class support for IronPython
and some clarity on the difference between SSDS and Windows Azure Storage services.
Hopefully we can avoid a LINQ
to Entities vs. LINQ to SQL-style situation in the future.

Postscript: Food for Thought

It would be interesting to read [or write] further thoughts on the pros and cons of
Platform as a Service offerings when compared to Utility Computing offerings. In a previous
discussion on my blog there was some consensus that utility computing approaches
are more resistant to vendor lock-in than platform as a service approaches since it
is easier to find multiple vendors who are providing virtual servers with LAMP/WISC
hosting than it will be to find multiple vendors providing the exact same proprietary
cloud APIs as Google, Amazon or Microsoft. However it would be informative to look
at the topic from more angles, for instance what is the cost/benefit tradeoff of using
SimpleDB/BigTable/SSDS for data access instead of MySQL running on multiple virtual
hosts? With my paternity leave ending today, I doubt I'll have time to go over these
topics in depth but I'd appreciate reading any such analysis.

Windows Azure from a Developer's Perspectivehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39d.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/11/03/WindowsAzureFromADevelopersPerspective.aspx
Mon, 03 Nov 2008 10:04:04 GMT<p>
<em><u>Disclaimer:</u> What follows are my personal impressions from using the beta
version of Windows Azure. It is not meant to be an official description of the project
from Microsoft, you can find that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/azure">here</a>.</em>&#160;
</p>
<p>
Earlier this week I scored an invite to try out the beta version of <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/azure/">Windows
Azure</a> which is a new hosted services (aka cloud computing) platform from Microsoft.
Since there's been <a href="http://www.techmeme.com/081027/h2225">a ridiculous amount
of press</a> about the project I was interested in actually trying it out by developing
and deploying some code using this platform and sharing my experiences with others.
</p>
<h4>What is it?
</h4>
<p>
Before talking about a cloud computing platform, it is useful to agree on definitions
of the term <em>cloud computing</em>. Tim O'Reilly has an excellent post entitled <a href="http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/web-20-and-cloud-computing.html">Web
2.0 and Cloud Computing</a> where he breaks the technologies typically described as
cloud computing into three broad categories
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<u>Utility Computing:</u> In this approach, a vendor provides access to virtual server
instances where each instance runs a traditional server operating system such as Linux
or Windows Server. Computation and storage resources are metered and the customer
can &quot;scale infinitely&quot; by simply creating new server instances. The most
popular example of this approach is <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/ec2">Amazon EC2</a>.
</li>
<li>
<u>Platform as a Service:</u> In this approach, a vendor abstracts away the notion
of accessing traditional
<abbr title="Linux Apache MySQL PHP/Perl/Python">
LAMP
</abbr>
or
<abbr title="Windows IIS SQL Server C#">
WISC
</abbr>
stacks from their customers and instead provides an environment for running programs
written using a particular platform. In addition, data storage is provided via a custom
storage layer and API instead of traditional relational database access. The most
popular example of this approach is <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/">Google
App Engine</a>.
</li>
<li>
<u>Cloud-based end user applications:</u> This typically refers to Web-based applications
that have previously been provided as desktop or server based applications. Examples
include <a href="http://docs.google.com/">Google Docs</a>, <a href="http://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a> and <a href="http://www.hotmail.com">Hotmail</a>.
Technically every Web application falls under this category, however the term often
isn't used that inclusively.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
With these definitions clearly stated it is easier to talk about what Windows Azure
is and is not. Windows Azure is currently #2; a Platform as a Service offering. Although
there have been numerous references to Amazon's offerings both by Microsoft and bloggers
covering the Azure announcements, Windows Azure is not a utility computing offering
[as defined above].
</p>
<p>
There has definitely been some confusion about this as evidenced by Dave Winer's post <a href="http://www.scripting.com/stories/2008/10/27/microsoftsCloudStrategy.html">Microsoft's
cloud strategy?</a> and commentary from other sources.
</p>
<h4>Getting Started
</h4>
<p>
To try out Azure you need to be running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista with
a bunch of prerequisites you can get from running the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/web/channel/products/WebPlatformInstaller.aspx">Microsoft
Web Platform installer</a>. Once you have the various prerequisites installed (SQL
Server, IIS 7, .NET Framework 3.5, etc) you should then grab the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BB893FB0-AD04-4FE8-BB04-0C5E4278D3E9&amp;displaylang=en">Windows
Azure SDK</a>. Users of Visual Studio will also benefit from grabbing the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=63D0D248-1B08-4F7D-ABDE-62EB75CB1E69&amp;displaylang=en">Windows
Azure Tools for Visual Studio</a>.
</p>
<p>
After this process, you should be able to fire up Visual Studio and see the option
to create a Cloud Service if you go to File-&gt;New-&gt;Project.
</p>
<h4>Building Cloud-based Applications with Azure
</h4>
<p>
The diagram below taken from the Windows Azure SDK shows the key participants in a
typical Windows Azure service
</p>
<p>
<img src="http://4vwitg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1plCnU_252ak7bWiCp9S8PNV-snsMvHmGH9Xa1x2ZfRLBwDLRnHxO_1R7Y3ZmdXLgluhhr-C6Lw5k/Azure.jpg" />
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
The work units that make up a Windows Azure hosted service can have one of two roles.
A Web role is an application that listens for and responds to Web requests while a
Worker role is a background processing task which acts autonomously but cannot be
accessed over the Web. A Windows Azure application can have multiple instances of
Web and Worker roles that make up the service. For example, if I was developing a
Web-based RSS reader I would need a worker role for polling feeds and Web role for
displaying the UI that the user interacts with. Both Web and Worker roles are .NET
applications that can be developed locally and then deployed on Microsoft's servers
when they are ready to go.
</p>
<p>
Azure applications have access to a storage layer that provides the following three
storage services
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
<u>Blob Storage:</u> This is used for storing binary data. A user account can have
one or more containers which in turn can contain one or more blobs of binary data.
Containers cannot be nested so one cannot create hierarchical folder structures. However
Azure allows applications to work around this by (i) allowing applications to query
containers based on substring matching on prefixes and (ii) delimiters such as '\'
and other path characters are valid blob names. So I can create blobs with names like
'mypics\wife.jpg' and 'mypics\son.jpg' in the media container and then query for blobs
beginning with 'mypics\' thus simulating a folder hierarchy somewhat.&#160;
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Queue Service:</u> This is a straightforward message queuing service. A user account
can have one or more queues from which they can add items to the end of each queue
and remove items from the front. Items have a maximum time-to-live of 7 days within
the queue. When an item is retrieved from the queue, an associated 'pop receipt' is
provided. The item is then hidden from other client applications until some interval
(by default 30 seconds) has passed after which the item becomes visible. The item
can be deleted from the queue during that interval if the pop receipt from when it
was retrieved is provided as part of the DELETE operation.&#160; The queue service
is valuable as a way for Web roles to talk to Worker roles and vice versa.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Table Storage:</u> This exposes a subset of the capabilities of the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc668792.aspx">ADO.NET
Data Services Framework</a> (aka Astoria). In general, this is a schema-less table
based model similar to <a href="http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html">Google's
BigTable</a> and <a href="http://aws.amazon.com/simpledb/">Amazon's SimpleDB</a>.
The data model consists of tables and entities (aka rows). Each entity has a primary
key made of two parts {PartitionKey, RowKey}, a last modified timestamp and an arbitrary
number of user-defined properties. Properties can be one of several primitive types
including integer, strings, doubles, long integers, GUIDs, booleans and binary. Like
Astoria, the Table Storage service supports performing LINQ queries on rows but only
supports the FROM, WHERE and TAKE operators. Other differences from Astoria are that
it doesn't support batch operations nor is it possible to retrieve individual properties
from an entity without retrieving the entire entity.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
These storage services are accessible to any HTTP client and not just Azure applications.&#160;
</p>
<h4>Deploying Cloud-based Applications with Azure
</h4>
<p>
The following diagram taken from the Windows Azure SDK shows the development lifecycle
of an Windows Azure application
</p>
<p>
<img src="http://4vwitg.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pQbWsn6JW6oiwlOTaUOOov84uvuZdsN8NBA3buNdVJBoWO26NSkThZYK2KtXa3Si_FJgPfb3Plts/Azure Deployment.jpg" />&#160;
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
The SDK ships with a development fabric which enables you to deploy an Azure an application
locally via IIS 7.0 and development storage which uses SQL Server Express as a storage
layer which mimics the Windows Azure storage services.
</p>
<p>
As the diagram shows above, once the application is tested locally it can be deployed
entirely or in part on Microsoft's storage and cloud computation services.
</p>
<h4>The Azure Services Platform: Windows Azure + Microsoft's Family of REST Web Services
</h4>
<p>
In addition to Windows Azure, Microsoft also announced the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/azure/services.mspx">Azure
Services Platform</a> which is a variety of Web APIs and Web Services that can be
used in combination with Windows Azure (or by themselves) to build cloud-based applications.
Each of these Web services is worthy of its own post (or whitepaper and O'Reilly animal
book) but I'll limit myself to one sentence descriptions for now.
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
<u>Live Services:</u> A set of REST APIs for consumer-centric data types (e.g. calendar,
profile, etc) and scenarios (communication, presence, sync, etc). You can see the
set of APIs in the <a href="http://dev.live.com/liveframework/livefxposter.pdf">Live
Framework poster</a> and keep up with the goings on by following the <a href="http://dev.live.com/blogs/">Live
Services blogs</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Microsoft SQL Services</u>: Relational database in the cloud accessible via REST
APIs. You can learn more from the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/dataservices/default.aspx">SSDS
developer center</a> and keep up with the goings on by following the <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/">SQL
Server Data Services team blog</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Microsoft .NET Services:</u> Three fairly different services for now; hosted access
control, hosted workflow engine and a service bus in the cloud. Boring enterprise
stuff. :)&#160;
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Microsoft Sharepoint Services:</u> I couldn't figure out if anything concrete was
announced here or whether stuff was pre-announced (i.e. actual announcement to come
at a later date).
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<u>Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services:</u> Ditto.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
From the above list, I find the Live Services piece (access to user data in a uniform
way) and the SQL Services (hosted storage) most interesting. I will likely revisit
them in more depth at a later date.
</p>
<h4>The Bottom Line
</h4>
<p>
From my perspective, Windows Azure is easiest viewed as a competitor to <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/">Google
App Engine</a>. As comparisons go, Azure already brings a number of features to the
table that aren't even on the <a href="http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/roadmap.html">Google
App Engine road map</a>. The key important feature is the ability to run background
tasks instead of just being limited to writing applications that respond to Web requests.
This limitation of App Engine means you can't write any application that does any
serious background computation like a search engine, email service, or RSS reader
on Google App Engine. So Azure can run an entire class of applications that are simply <u>not
possible</u> on Google App Engine.
</p>
<p>
The second key feature is that by supporting the .NET Framework, developers <em>theoretically</em> get
a plethora of languages to choose from including Ruby (IronRuby), Python (IronPython),
F#, VB.NET and C#. In practice, the Azure SDK only supports creating cloud applications
using C# and VB.NET out of the box. However I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't
be able to support development with other .NET enabled languages like IronPython.
On the flipside, App Engine only supports Python and the timeline for it supporting
other languages [and exactly which other languages] is still To Be Determined.
</p>
<p>
Finally, <a title="High Scalability: Google AppEngine - A Second Look" href="http://highscalability.com/google-appengine-second-look">App
Engine has a number of scalability limitations</a> both from a data storage and a
query performance perspective. Azure definitely does better than App Engine on a number
of these axes. For example, <a title="Understanding Application Quotas with Google App Engine" href="http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/quotas.html">App
Engine has a 1MB limit per file</a> while Azure has a 64MB limit on individual blobs
and also allows you to split a blob into blocks of 4MB each. Similarly, I've been
watching <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/dataservices/default.aspx">SQL
Server Data Services (SSDS)</a> for a while and I haven't seen or heard complaints
about query performance.
</p>
<p>
Azure makes it possible for me to reuse my existing skills as a .NET developer who
is savvy with using RESTful APIs to build cloud based applications without having
to worry about scalability concerns (e.g. database sharding, replication strategies,
server failover, etc). In addition, it puts pressure on competitors to step up to
the plate and deliver. However you look at it, this is a massive WIN for Web developers.
</p>
<p>
The two small things I'd love to see addressed are first class support for IronPython
and some clarity on the difference between SSDS and Windows Azure Storage services.
Hopefully we can avoid a <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2008/10/31/clarifying-the-message-on-l2s-futures.aspx">LINQ
to Entities vs. LINQ to SQL</a>-style situation in the future.
</p>
<h4>Postscript: Food for Thought
</h4>
<p>
It would be interesting to read [or write] further thoughts on the pros and cons of
Platform as a Service offerings when compared to Utility Computing offerings. In a <a title="Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life: Cloud Computing and Vendor Lock-In" href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView.aspx?guid=8d0777b1-d74a-482e-805f-55f1af6880a8#commentstart">previous
discussion on my blog</a> there was some consensus that utility computing approaches
are more resistant to vendor lock-in than platform as a service approaches since it
is easier to find multiple vendors who are providing virtual servers with LAMP/WISC
hosting than it will be to find multiple vendors providing the exact same proprietary
cloud APIs as Google, Amazon or Microsoft. However it would be informative to look
at the topic from more angles, for instance what is the cost/benefit tradeoff of using
SimpleDB/BigTable/SSDS for data access instead of MySQL running on multiple virtual
hosts? With my paternity leave ending today, I doubt I'll have time to go over these
topics in depth but I'd appreciate reading any such analysis.
</p>
<p>
<img style="vertical-align: middle" title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://shared.live.com/HjKMzTS-xzcms40%21CabizA/emoticons/music_note.gif" /> Now
Playing: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=The Game&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">The
Game</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=The Game+Money&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">Money</a> <img style="vertical-align: middle" title="Note" alt="Note" src="http://shared.live.com/HjKMzTS-xzcms40%21CabizA/emoticons/music_note.gif" />
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39d" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,85af3b7a-8f9c-48f7-84f0-8761774ff39d.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeWindows Livehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce2http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce2.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce2.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce21

Guess who has a post-dissertation job? [Yes, that implies I'm actually going to
finish this *#$@! dissertation.] ::bounce:: In January, I will be joining the newly
minted Microsoft
Research New England in Boston, MA. w00000t!!!!! I couldn't be more ecstatic.…It all began with Dopplr.
Linda Stone noticed that I was swinging through Seattle and she called me up and told
me that I had to do dinner with her. Linda's plots are always tremendous so of course
I said yes. When I arrived, she introduced me to Jennifer
Chayes and Christian
Borgs, the physicists who were starting the new MSR lab. Jennifer immediately
began interrogating me about my research and about social science more broadly. To
say Jennifer & I clicked is a bit of an understatement. Like me, Jennifer is loud,
crazy, and intense. We got along like peas in a pod and spent the night chattering
away. When she told me that I should come work for her, I laughed it off and didn't
think much about it. But I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Jennifer and Christian's vision for the lab aligned with my view of research.
They believe in interdisciplinary work, believe in the ways that new ideas can come
from unexpected collaborations. While I know a lot of social scientists who curl their
nose at the idea of a lab full of physicists, mathematicians, and economists, I find
that quite appealing. I love the idea of such a diverse group thinking about how the
world works from different angles. Plus, meeting the folks at the new lab - Henry
Cohn, Yael
Kalai, Adam
Kalai, and Butler
Lampson - only made me more intrigued by it. Everyone was so ridiculously
nice and even though we didn't work on the same problems we found funny intersections.

The more that I talked with folks at MSR, the more I fell in love with the possibility
of going there. And then I started meeting with execs and realized that what MSR researchers
were telling me fit with broader strategy. I met with Rick Rashid, the head of MSR,
who explained why he started MSR and how he saw it fit into the company. I met with
Ray Ozzie (who I've known and adored for quite some time) and he confirmed the importance
of research for the future of Microsoft. Both of them made me feel fully confident
that my approach to research would not only be tolerated but welcomed. Plus, there's
a broad desire to understand the intersections between computing and all things social
which is straight up my alley.

Congratulations to danah, I've always loved her
research and I'm glad to see that she will continue contributing to the industry
as a part of Microsoft Research. She is one of the few people out there doing real
research into how social software is changing the lives of people on the Web and I'm
glad Microsoft can be a part of that effort.

danah boyd Joining Microsofthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce2.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/09/22/danahBoydJoiningMicrosoft.aspx
Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:20:56 GMT<p>
Someone at Microsoft forwarded me a link to danah boyd's announcement, <a href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/09/21/i_will_be_joini.html">I
will be joining Microsoft Research in January</a> where she writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Guess who has a post-dissertation job? [Yes, that implies I'm actually going to
finish this *#$@! dissertation.] ::bounce:: In January, I will be joining the newly
minted </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/newengland/default.aspx"><em>Microsoft
Research New England</em></a><em> in Boston, MA. w00000t!!!!! I couldn't be more ecstatic.</em>
<br>
<em>…</em>
<br>
<em>It all began with </em><a href="http://www.dopplr.com/"><em>Dopplr</em></a><em>.
Linda Stone noticed that I was swinging through Seattle and she called me up and told
me that I had to do dinner with her. Linda's plots are always tremendous so of course
I said yes. When I arrived, she introduced me to </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/%7Ejchayes/"><em>Jennifer
Chayes</em></a><em> and </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/%7Eborgs/"><em>Christian
Borgs</em></a><em>, the physicists who were starting the new MSR lab. Jennifer immediately
began interrogating me about my research and about social science more broadly. To
say Jennifer &amp; I clicked is a bit of an understatement. Like me, Jennifer is loud,
crazy, and intense. We got along like peas in a pod and spent the night chattering
away. When she told me that I should come work for her, I laughed it off and didn't
think much about it. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Jennifer and Christian's vision for the lab aligned with my view of research.
They believe in interdisciplinary work, believe in the ways that new ideas can come
from unexpected collaborations. While I know a lot of social scientists who curl their
nose at the idea of a lab full of physicists, mathematicians, and economists, I find
that quite appealing. I love the idea of such a diverse group thinking about how the
world works from different angles. Plus, meeting the folks at the new lab - </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/%7Ecohn/"><em>Henry
Cohn</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/%7Eyael/"><em>Yael
Kalai</em></a><em>, </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/%7Eadum/"><em>Adam
Kalai</em></a><em>, and </em><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/Lampson/"><em>Butler
Lampson</em></a><em> - only made me more intrigued by it. Everyone was so ridiculously
nice and even though we didn't work on the same problems we found funny intersections. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>The more that I talked with folks at MSR, the more I fell in love with the possibility
of going there. And then I started meeting with execs and realized that what MSR researchers
were telling me fit with broader strategy. I met with Rick Rashid, the head of MSR,
who explained why he started MSR and how he saw it fit into the company. I met with
Ray Ozzie (who I've known and adored for quite some time) and he confirmed the importance
of research for the future of Microsoft. Both of them made me feel fully confident
that my approach to research would not only be tolerated but welcomed. Plus, there's
a broad desire to understand the intersections between computing and all things social
which is straight up my alley. </em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Congratulations to danah, I've always loved <a title="danah boyd's publications" href="http://www.danah.org/papers/">her
research</a> and I'm glad to see that she will continue contributing to the industry
as a part of Microsoft Research. She is one of the few people out there doing real
research into how social software is changing the lives of people on the Web and I'm
glad Microsoft can be a part of that effort.
</p>
<p>
Besides her research papers, danah also have some interesting insights into the current
goings on in the world of social networking sites like her post <a title="Facebook and Techcrunch: the costs of technological determinism and configuring users" href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/09/15/facebook_and_te.html">Facebook
and Techcrunch: the costs of technological determinism and configuring users</a> on
Facebook's continued determination to delete user accounts that don't conform to the
company's beliefs about how the site should be used. Her post <a title="knol: content w/out context, collaboration, capital, or coruscation" href="http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/08/01/knol_content_wo.html">knol:
content w/out context, collaboration, capital, or coruscation</a> which points out
some of the shortcomings of <a href="http://knol.google.com">Google's Knol</a> when
compared to Wikipedia is also another great recent post of note.
</p>
<p>
Good luck with the new job, danah.
</p>
<p>
<b>Now Playing:</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=Rascal%20Flatts&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Rascal
Flatts</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=Rascal%20Flatts+My%20Wish&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">My
Wish</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce2" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,e61bab26-30e3-4951-b537-453137539ce2.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeMindless Link Propagationhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01

Whenever you read stories about how Web companies like Facebook have 10,000
servers including 1800 database servers or that Google
has one million servers, do you ever wonder how the system administrators that
manage these services deal with deployment, patching, failure detection and system
repair without going crazy? This post is the first in a series of posts that examines
some of the technologies that successful Web companies use to manage large Web server
farms.

Microsoft is rapidly increasing the number of large-scale web services that it
operates. Services such as Windows Live Search and Windows Live Mail operate from
data centers that contain tens or hundreds of thousands of computers,
and it is essential that these data centers function reliably with minimal human intervention.
This paper describes the first version of Autopilot, the automatic data center management
infrastructure developed within Microsoft over the last few years. Autopilot is responsible
for automating software provisioning and deployment; system monitoring; and carrying
out repair actions to deal with faulty software and hardware. A key assumption underlying
Autopilot is that the services built on it must be designed to be manageable. We also
therefore outline the best practices adopted by applications that run on Autopilot.

The paper provides a high level overview of the system, it's design principles and
the requirements for applications/services that can be managed by the system. It gives
a lot of insight into what it takes to manage a large server farm while keeping management
and personnel costs low.

The purpose of AutoPilot is to automate and simplify the basic tasks that system administrators
typically perform in a data center. This includes installation and deployment of software
(including operating systems and patches), monitoring the health of the system, taking
basic repair actions and marking systems as needing physical repair or replacement.

However applications that will be managed by AutoPilot also have their responsibilities.
The primary responsibility of these applications include being extremely fault tolerant
(i.e. applications must be able to handle processes being killed without warning)
and being capable of running in the case of large outages in the cloud (i.e. up to
50% of the servers being out of service). In addition, these applications need to
be easy to install and configure which means that they need to be xcopy
deployable. Finally, the application developers are responsible for describing
which application specific error detection heuristics AutoPilot should use when monitoring
their service.

Typical AutoPilot Architecture

The above drawing is taken from the research paper. According to the paper the tasks
of the various components is as follows

The Device Manager is the central system-wide authority for configuration and
coordination. The Provisioning Service and Deployment Service ensure that each computer
is running the correct operating system image and set of application processes. The
Watchdog Service and Repair Service cooperate with the application and the Device
Manager to detect and recover from software and hardware failures. The Collection
Service and Cockpit passively gather information about the running components and
make it available in real-time for monitoring the health of the service, as well as
recording statistics for off-line analysis. (These monitoring components are ―Autopiloted
like any other application, and therefore communicate with the Device Manager and
Watchdog Service which provide fault recovery, deployment assistance, etc., but this
communication is not shown in the figure for simplicity.)

The typical functioning of the system is described in the following section.

What Does AutoPilot Do?

The set of machine types used by the application (e.g. Web crawler, front end Web
server, etc) needs to be defined in a database stored by on the Device Manager.
A server's machine type dictates what configuration files and application binaries
need to be installed on the server. This list is manually defined by the system administrators
for the application. The Device Manager also keeps track of the current state of the
cluster including what various machine types are online and their health status.

The Provisioning Service continually scans the network looking for
new servers that have come online. When a new member of the server cluster is detected,
the Provisioning Service asks the Device Manager what operating system image it should
be running and then images the machine with a new operating system before performing
burn-in tests. If the tests are successful, the Provisioning Service informs the Device
Manager that the server is healthy. In addition to operating system components, some
AutoPilot specific services are also installed on the new server. There is a dedicated filesync service
that ensures that the correct files are present on the computer and an application
manager that ensures that the expected application binaries are running.

Both services determine what the right state of the machine should be by querying
the Device Manager. If it is determined that the required application binaries and
files are not present on the machine then they are retrieved from the Deployment
Service. The Deployment Service is a host to the various application manifests
which map to the various application folders, binaries and data files. These manifests
are populated from the application's build system which is outside the AutoPilot system.

The Deployment Service also comes into play when a new version of the application
is ready to be deployed. During this process a new manifest is loaded into the Deployment
Service and the Device Manager informs the various machine types of the availability
of the new application bits. Each machine type has a notion of an active manifest
which allows application bits for a new version of the application to be deployed
as an inactive manifest while the old version of the application is considered to
be "active". The new version of the application is rolled out in chunks
called "scale units". A scale unit is a group of multiple machine types
which can number up to 500 machines. Partitioning the cluster into scale units allows
code roll outs to be staged. For example, if you have a cluster of 10,000 machines
with scale units of 500 machines, then AutoPilot could be configured keep roll outs
to under 5 scale units at a time so that never more than 25% of the cloud is being
upgraded at a time.

Besides operating system installation and deployment of application components, AutoPilot
is also capable of monitoring the health of the service and taking certain repair
actions. The Watchdog Service is responsible for detecting failures
in the system. It does so by probing each of the servers in the cluster and testing
various properties of the machines and the application(s) running on them based on
various predetermined criteria. Each watchdog can report one of three results for
a test; OK, Warning or Error. A Warning does not initiate any repair action and simply
indicates a non-fatal error has occurred. When a watchdog reports an error back to
the Device Manager, the machine is placed in the Failure state and one of the following
repair actions is taken; DoNothing, Reboot, ReImage or Replace. The choice of repair
action depends on the failure history of the machine. If this is the first error that
has been reported on the machine in multiple days or weeks then it is assumed to be
a transient error and the appropriate action is DoNothing. If not, the machine is
rebooted and if after numerous reboots the system is still detected to be in error
by the watchdogs it is re-imaged (a process which includes reformatting the hard drive
and reinstalling the operating system as well redeploying application bits). If none
of these solve the problem then the machine is marked for replacement and it is picked
up by a data center technician during weekly or biweekly sweeps to remove dead servers.

System administrators can also directly monitor the system using data aggregated by
the Collection Service which collects information from various performance
counters is written to a large-scale distributed file store for offline data mining
and to a SQL database where the data can be visualized as graphs and reports in a
visualization tool known as the Cockpit.

Managing Large Web Server Farms: Microsoft's AutoPilothttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/08/11/ManagingLargeWebServerFarmsMicrosoftsAutoPilot.aspx
Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:23:57 GMT<p>
</p>
<p>
Whenever you read stories about how Web companies like Facebook have <a title="Data Center Knowledge: Facebook Now Running 10,000 Web Servers" href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/Apr/23/facebook_now_running_10000_web_servers.html">10,000
servers including 1800 database servers</a> or that <a title="Gartner: Look Beyond Google&#39;s Plan to Become Carbon Neutral" href="http://www.gartner.com/resources/149800/149834/look_beyond_googles_plan_to__149834.pdf">Google
has one million servers</a>, do you ever wonder how the system administrators that
manage these services deal with deployment, patching, failure detection and system
repair without going crazy? This post is the first in a series of posts that examines
some of the technologies that successful Web companies use to manage large Web server
farms.
</p>
<p>
Last year, <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/users/misard/">Michael Isard</a> of
Microsoft Research wrote a paper entitled <a title="http://research.microsoft.com/users/misard/papers/osr2007.pdf" href="http://research.microsoft.com/users/misard/papers/osr2007.pdf">Autopilot:
Automatic Data Center Management</a> which describes the technology that Windows Live
and Live Search services have used to manage their server farms. The abstract of his
paper is as follows
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Microsoft is rapidly increasing the number of large-scale web services that it
operates. Services such as Windows Live Search and Windows Live Mail operate from
data centers that contain <font color="#ff0000">tens or hundreds of thousands of computers</font>,
and it is essential that these data centers function reliably with minimal human intervention.
This paper describes the first version of Autopilot, the automatic data center management
infrastructure developed within Microsoft over the last few years. Autopilot is responsible
for automating software provisioning and deployment; system monitoring; and carrying
out repair actions to deal with faulty software and hardware. A key assumption underlying
Autopilot is that the services built on it must be designed to be manageable. We also
therefore outline the best practices adopted by applications that run on Autopilot.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
The paper provides a high level overview of the system, it's design principles and
the requirements for applications/services that can be managed by the system. It gives
a lot of insight into what it takes to manage a large server farm while keeping management
and personnel costs low.
</p>
<p>
The purpose of AutoPilot is to automate and simplify the basic tasks that system administrators
typically perform in a data center. This includes installation and deployment of software
(including operating systems and patches), monitoring the health of the system, taking
basic repair actions and marking systems as needing physical repair or replacement.
</p>
<p>
However applications that will be managed by AutoPilot also have their responsibilities.
The primary responsibility of these applications include being extremely fault tolerant
(i.e. applications must be able to handle processes being killed without warning)
and being capable of running in the case of large outages in the cloud (i.e. up to
50% of the servers being out of service). In addition, these applications need to
be easy to install and configure which means that they need to be <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000243.html">xcopy
deployable</a>. Finally, the application developers are responsible for describing
which application specific error detection heuristics AutoPilot should use when monitoring
their service.
</p>
<h3>Typical AutoPilot Architecture
</h3>
<p>
&#160;<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/2746736922_2b966901ee.jpg?v=0" />
</p>
<p>
The above drawing is taken from the research paper. According to the paper the tasks
of the various components is as follows
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>The Device Manager is the central system-wide authority for configuration and
coordination. The Provisioning Service and Deployment Service ensure that each computer
is running the correct operating system image and set of application processes. The
Watchdog Service and Repair Service cooperate with the application and the Device
Manager to detect and recover from software and hardware failures. The Collection
Service and Cockpit passively gather information about the running components and
make it available in real-time for monitoring the health of the service, as well as
recording statistics for off-line analysis. (These monitoring components are ―Autopiloted
like any other application, and therefore communicate with the Device Manager and
Watchdog Service which provide fault recovery, deployment assistance, etc., but this
communication is not shown in the figure for simplicity.)</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
The typical functioning of the system is described in the following section.
</p>
<h3>What Does AutoPilot Do?
</h3>
<p>
The set of machine types used by the application (e.g. Web crawler, front end Web
server, etc) needs to be defined in a database stored by on the <strong>Device Manager</strong>.
A server's machine type dictates what configuration files and application binaries
need to be installed on the server. This list is manually defined by the system administrators
for the application. The Device Manager also keeps track of the current state of the
cluster including what various machine types are online and their health status.
</p>
<p>
The <strong>Provisioning Service</strong> continually scans the network looking for
new servers that have come online. When a new member of the server cluster is detected,
the Provisioning Service asks the Device Manager what operating system image it should
be running and then images the machine with a new operating system before performing
burn-in tests. If the tests are successful, the Provisioning Service informs the Device
Manager that the server is healthy. In addition to operating system components, some
AutoPilot specific services are also installed on the new server. There is a dedicated <em>filesync</em> service
that ensures that the correct files are present on the computer and an <em>application
manager</em> that ensures that the expected application binaries are running.
</p>
<p>
Both services determine what the right state of the machine should be by querying
the Device Manager. If it is determined that the required application binaries and
files are not present on the machine then they are retrieved from the <strong>Deployment
Service</strong>. The Deployment Service is a host to the various application manifests
which map to the various application folders, binaries and data files. These manifests
are populated from the application's build system which is outside the AutoPilot system.
</p>
<p>
The Deployment Service also comes into play when a new version of the application
is ready to be deployed. During this process a new manifest is loaded into the Deployment
Service and the Device Manager informs the various machine types of the availability
of the new application bits. Each machine type has a notion of an active manifest
which allows application bits for a new version of the application to be deployed
as an inactive manifest while the old version of the application is considered to
be &quot;active&quot;. The new version of the application is rolled out in chunks
called &quot;scale units&quot;. A scale unit is a group of multiple machine types
which can number up to 500 machines. Partitioning the cluster into scale units allows
code roll outs to be staged. For example, if you have a cluster of 10,000 machines
with scale units of 500 machines, then AutoPilot could be configured keep roll outs
to under 5 scale units at a time so that never more than 25% of the cloud is being
upgraded at a time.
</p>
<p>
Besides operating system installation and deployment of application components, AutoPilot
is also capable of monitoring the health of the service and taking certain repair
actions. The <strong>Watchdog Service</strong> is responsible for detecting failures
in the system. It does so by probing each of the servers in the cluster and testing
various properties of the machines and the application(s) running on them based on
various predetermined criteria. Each watchdog can report one of three results for
a test; OK, Warning or Error. A Warning does not initiate any repair action and simply
indicates a non-fatal error has occurred. When a watchdog reports an error back to
the Device Manager, the machine is placed in the Failure state and one of the following
repair actions is taken; DoNothing, Reboot, ReImage or Replace. The choice of repair
action depends on the failure history of the machine. If this is the first error that
has been reported on the machine in multiple days or weeks then it is assumed to be
a transient error and the appropriate action is DoNothing. If not, the machine is
rebooted and if after numerous reboots the system is still detected to be in error
by the watchdogs it is re-imaged (a process which includes reformatting the hard drive
and reinstalling the operating system as well redeploying application bits). If none
of these solve the problem then the machine is marked for replacement and it is picked
up by a data center technician during weekly or biweekly sweeps to remove dead servers.
</p>
<p>
System administrators can also directly monitor the system using data aggregated by
the <strong>Collection Service</strong> which collects information from various performance
counters is written to a large-scale distributed file store for offline data mining
and to a SQL database where the data can be visualized as graphs and reports in a
visualization tool known as the <strong>Cockpit</strong>.&#160;
</p>
<p>
<b>Now Playing:</b> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_m_pop/?search-alias=popular&amp;unfiltered=1&amp;field-keywords=&amp;field-artist=Nirvana&amp;field-title=&amp;field-label=&amp;field-binding=&amp;sort=relevancerank&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.x=19&amp;Adv-Srch-Music-Album-Submit.y=6">Nirvana</a> - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dmusic?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&amp;field-keywords=Nirvana+Jesus Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam&amp;x=0&amp;y=0">Jesus
Doesn't Want Me For A Sunbeam</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,992c568e-eace-476a-bab2-0c0efff0ab01.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeWeb Developmenthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=4ab11c6e-6b8f-4c5e-92a8-3fd92f27abdahttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,4ab11c6e-6b8f-4c5e-92a8-3fd92f27abda.aspxDare Obasanjohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,4ab11c6e-6b8f-4c5e-92a8-3fd92f27abda.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=4ab11c6e-6b8f-4c5e-92a8-3fd92f27abda33

Recently I’ve been bumping into more and more people who’ve either left Google to
come to Microsoft or got offers from both companies and picked Microsoft over Google.
I believe this is part of a larger trend especially since I’ve seen lots of people
who left the company for “greener pastures” return in the past year (at least 8 people
I know personally have rejoined) . However in this blog post I’ll stick to talking
about people who’ve chosen Microsoft over Google.

First of all there’s the post by Sergey Solyanik entitled Back
to Microsoft where he primarily gripes about the culture and lack of career development
at Google, some key excerpts are

Last week I left Google to go back to Microsoft, where I started this Monday (and
so not surprisingly, I was too busy to blog about it)
…
So why did I leave?

There are many things about Google that are not great, and merit improvement.
There are plenty of silly politics, underperformance, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness,
and things that are plain stupid. I will not write about these things here because
they are immaterial. I did not leave because of them. No company has achieved the
status of the perfect workplace, and no one ever will.

I left because Microsoft turned out to be the right place for me.
…
Google software business is divided between producing the "eye candy" - web properties
that are designed to amuse and attract people - and the infrastructure required to
support them. Some of the web properties are useful (some extremely useful - search),
but most of them primarily help people waste time online (blogger, youtube, orkut,
etc)
…
This orientation towards cool, but not necessarilly useful or essential software really
affects the way the software engineering is done. Everything is pretty much run by
the engineering - PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. While
they do exist in theory, there are too few of them to matter.

On one hand, there are beneficial effects - it is easy to ship software quickly…On
the other hand, I was using Google software - a lot of it - in the last year, and
slick as it is, there's just too much of it that is regularly broken. It seems like
every week 10% of all the features are broken in one or the other browser. And it's
a different 10% every week - the old bugs are getting fixed, the new ones introduced.
This across Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and more
…
The culture part is very important here - you can spend more time fixing bugs, you
can introduce processes to improve things, but it is very, very hard to change the
culture. And the culture at Google values "coolness" tremendously, and the quality
of service not as much. At least in the places where I worked.
…
The second reason I left Google was because I realized that I am not excited by the
individual contributor role any more, and I don't want to become a manager at Google.

The Google Manager is a very interesting phenomenon. On one hand, they usually
have a LOT of people from different businesses reporting to them, and are perennially
very busy.

On the other hand, in my year at Google, I could not figure out what was it they
were doing. The better manager that I had collected feedback from my peers and gave
it to me. There was no other (observable by me) impact on Google. The worse manager
that I had did not do even that, so for me as a manager he was a complete no-op. I
asked quite a few other engineers from senior to senior staff levels that had spent
far more time at Google than I, and they didn't know either. I am not making this
up!

Sergey isn’t the only senior engineer I know who has contributed significantly
to Google projects and then decided Microsoft was a better fit for him. Danny Thorpe who
worked on Google Gears is back at Microsoft for his second stint working on developer
technologies related to Windows Live. These aren’t the only folks I’ve seen
who’ve decided to make the switch from the big G to the b0rg, these are just the ones
who have blogs that I can point at.

My Experience at Interviews with Microsoft and Google

Few months ago I was interviewed for a software engineer in Google Zurich. If
I need to compare Microsoft and Google, I should tell it in short: Google sux! Here
are my reasons for this:

1) Google interview were not professional. It was like Olympiad in Informatics.
Google asked me only about algorithms and data structures, nothing about software
technologies and software engineering. It was obvious that they do not care that I
had 12 years software engineering experience. They just ignored this. The only think
Google wants to know about their candidates are their algorithms and analytical thinking
skills. Nothing about technology, nothing about engineering.

2) Google employ everybody as junior developer, ignoring the existing experience.
It is nice to work in Google if it is your first job, really nice, but if you have
12 years of experience with lots of languages, technologies and platforms, at lots
of senior positions, you should expect higher position in Google, right?

3) Microsoft have really good interview process. People working in Microsoft are
relly very smart and skillful. Their process is far ahead of Google. Their quality
of development is far ahead of Google. Their management is ahead of Google and their
recruitment is ahead of Google.

Microsoft is Better Place to Work than Google

At my interviews I was asking my interviewers in both Microsoft and Google a lot
about the development process, engineering and technologies. I was asking also my
colleagues working in these companies. I found for myself that Microsoft is better
organized, managed and structured. Microsoft do software development in more professional
way than Google. Their engineers are better. Their development process is better.
Their products are better. Their technologies are better. Their interviews are better.
Google was like a kindergarden - young and not experienced enough people, an office
full of fun and entertainment, interviews typical for junior people and lack of traditions
in development of high quality software products.

Based on my observations, I have theory that Google’s big problem is that the company
hasn’t realized that it isn’t a startup anymore. This disconnect between the company’s
status and it’s perception of itself manifests in a number of ways

Startups don’t have a career path for their employees. Does anyone at Facebook know
what they want to be in five years besides rich? However once riches are no
longer guaranteed and the stock isn’t firing on all cylinders (GOOG
is underperforming both the NASDAQ and DOW Jones industrial average this year)
then you need to have a better career plan for your employees that goes beyond “free
lunches and all the foosball you can handle".

There is no legacy code at a startup. When your code base is young, it isn’t a big
deal to have developers checking in new features after an overnight coding fit powered
by caffeine and pizza. For the most part, the code base shouldn’t be large enough
or interdependent enough for one change to cause issues. However it is practically
a law of software development that the older your code gets the more lines of code
it accumulates and the more closely coupled your modules become. This means changing
things in one part of the code can have adverse effects in another.

As all organizations mature they tend to add PROCESS. These processes exist to insulate
the companies from the mistakes that occur after a company gets to a certain size
and can no longer trust its employees to always do the right thing. Requiring code
reviews, design specifications, black box & whitebox & unit testing, usability
studies, threat models, etc are all the kinds of overhead that differentiate
a mature software development shop from a “fly by the seat of your pants” startup.
However once you’ve been through enough fire drills, some of those processes don’t
sound as bad as they once did. This is why senior developers value them while junior
developers don’t since the latter haven’t been around the block enough.

There is less politics at a startup. In any activity where humans have to come together
collaboratively to achieve a goal, there will always be people with different agendas.
The more people you add to the mix, the more agendas you have to contend with. Doing
things by consensus is OK when you have to get consensus from two or three people
who sit in the same hallway as you. It’s a totally different ball game when you need
to gain it from lots of people from across a diverse company working on different
projects in different regions of the world who have different perspectives on how
to solve your problems. At Google, even hiring
an undergraduate candidate has to go through several layers of committees which
means hiring managers need to possess some political savvy if they want to get their
candidates approved. The founders
of Dodgeball quit the Google after their startup was acquired after they realized
that they didn’t have the political savvy to get resources allocated to their project.

The fact that Google is having problems retaining employees isn't news, Fortune wrote an
article about it just a few months ago. The technology press makes it seem like
people are ditching Google for hot startups like FriendFeed and Facebook. However
the truth is more nuanced than that. Now that Google is just another big software
company, lots of people are comparing it to other big software companies like Microsoft
and finding it lacking.

The GOOG->MSFT Exodus: Working at Google vs. Working at Microsofthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,4ab11c6e-6b8f-4c5e-92a8-3fd92f27abda.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/06/29/TheGOOGMSFTExodusWorkingAtGoogleVsWorkingAtMicrosoft.aspx
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:57:25 GMT<p>
Recently I’ve been bumping into more and more people who’ve either left Google to
come to Microsoft or got offers from both companies and picked Microsoft over Google.
I believe this is part of a larger trend especially since I’ve seen lots of people
who left the company for “greener pastures” return in the past year (at least 8 people
I know personally have rejoined) . However in this blog post I’ll stick to talking
about people who’ve chosen Microsoft over Google.
</p>
<p>
First of all there’s the post by Sergey Solyanik entitled <a href="http://1-800-magic.blogspot.com/2008/06/back-to-microsoft.html">Back
to Microsoft</a> where he primarily gripes about the culture and lack of career development
at Google, some key excerpts are
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Last week I left Google to go back to Microsoft, where I started this Monday (and
so not surprisingly, I was too busy to blog about it)
<br>
…
<br>
So why did I leave? </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>There are many things about Google that are not great, and merit improvement.
There are plenty of silly politics, underperformance, inefficiencies and ineffectiveness,
and things that are plain stupid. I will not write about these things here because
they are immaterial. I did not leave because of them. No company has achieved the
status of the perfect workplace, and no one ever will.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>I left because Microsoft turned out to be the right place for me.
<br>
…
<br>
Google software business is divided between producing the "eye candy" - web properties
that are designed to amuse and attract people - and the infrastructure required to
support them. Some of the web properties are useful (some extremely useful - search),
but most of them primarily help people waste time online (blogger, youtube, orkut,
etc)
<br>
…
<br>
This orientation towards cool, but not necessarilly useful or essential software really
affects the way the software engineering is done. Everything is pretty much run by
the engineering - PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. While
they do exist in theory, there are too few of them to matter. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>On one hand, there are beneficial effects - it is easy to ship software quickly…On
the other hand, I was using Google software - a lot of it - in the last year, and
slick as it is, there's just too much of it that is regularly broken. It seems like
every week 10% of all the features are broken in one or the other browser. And it's
a different 10% every week - the old bugs are getting fixed, the new ones introduced.
This across Blogger, Gmail, Google Docs, Maps, and more
<br>
…
<br>
The culture part is very important here - you can spend more time fixing bugs, you
can introduce processes to improve things, but it is very, very hard to change the
culture. And the culture at Google values "coolness" tremendously, and the quality
of service not as much. At least in the places where I worked.
<br>
…
<br>
The second reason I left Google was because I realized that I am not excited by the
individual contributor role any more, and I don't want to become a manager at Google. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>The Google Manager is a very interesting phenomenon. On one hand, they usually
have a LOT of people from different businesses reporting to them, and are perennially
very busy. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>On the other hand, in my year at Google, I could not figure out what was it they
were doing. The better manager that I had collected feedback from my peers and gave
it to me. There was no other (observable by me) impact on Google. The worse manager
that I had did not do even that, so for me as a manager he was a complete no-op. I
asked quite a few other engineers from senior to senior staff levels that had spent
far more time at Google than I, and they didn't know either. I am not making this
up!</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Sergey isn’t the only senior engineer I know who&nbsp; has contributed significantly
to Google projects and then decided Microsoft was a better fit for him. Danny Thorpe <a href="http://dannythorpe.com/about2/">who
worked on Google Gears is back at Microsoft</a> for his second stint working on developer
technologies related to Windows Live.&nbsp; These aren’t the only folks I’ve seen
who’ve decided to make the switch from the big G to the b0rg, these are just the ones
who have blogs that I can point at.
</p>
<p>
Unsurprisingly, the fact that Google isn’t a good place for senior developers is also
becoming clearly evident in their interview processes. Take this post from Svetlin
Nakov entitled <a href="http://www.nakov.com/blog/2008/03/15/rejected-a-program-manager-position-at-microsoft-dublin-my-successful-interview-at-microsoft/">Rejected
a Program Manager Position at Microsoft Dublin - My Successful Interview at Microsoft</a> where
he concludes
</p>
<blockquote>
<h4><em>My Experience at Interviews with Microsoft and Google</em>
</h4>
<p>
<em>Few months ago I was interviewed for a software engineer in Google Zurich. If
I need to compare Microsoft and Google, I should tell it in short: Google sux! Here
are my reasons for this:</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>1) Google interview were not professional. It was like Olympiad in Informatics.
Google asked me only about algorithms and data structures, nothing about software
technologies and software engineering. It was obvious that they do not care that I
had 12 years software engineering experience. They just ignored this. The only think
Google wants to know about their candidates are their algorithms and analytical thinking
skills. Nothing about technology, nothing about engineering.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>2) Google employ everybody as junior developer, ignoring the existing experience.
It is nice to work in Google if it is your first job, really nice, but if you have
12 years of experience with lots of languages, technologies and platforms, at lots
of senior positions, you should expect higher position in Google, right?</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>3) Microsoft have really good interview process. People working in Microsoft are
relly very smart and skillful. Their process is far ahead of Google. Their quality
of development is far ahead of Google. Their management is ahead of Google and their
recruitment is ahead of Google.</em>
</p>
<h4><em>Microsoft is Better Place to Work than Google</em>
</h4>
<p>
<em>At my interviews I was asking my interviewers in both Microsoft and Google a lot
about the development process, engineering and technologies. I was asking also my
colleagues working in these companies. I found for myself that Microsoft is better
organized, managed and structured. Microsoft do software development in more professional
way than Google. Their engineers are better. Their development process is better.
Their products are better. Their technologies are better. Their interviews are better.
Google was like a kindergarden - young and not experienced enough people, an office
full of fun and entertainment, interviews typical for junior people and lack of traditions
in development of high quality software products.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Based on my observations, I have theory that Google’s big problem is that the company
hasn’t realized that it isn’t a startup anymore. This disconnect between the company’s
status and it’s perception of itself manifests in a number of ways
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>
Startups don’t have a career path for their employees. Does anyone at Facebook know
what they want to be in five years besides <b>rich</b>? However once riches are no
longer guaranteed and the stock isn’t firing on all cylinders (<a href="http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&amp;chdd=1&amp;chds=1&amp;chdv=1&amp;chvs=maximized&amp;chdeh=0&amp;chdet=1214749539170&amp;chddm=48484&amp;cmpto=INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC;INDEXDJX:.DJI&amp;q=NASDAQ:GOOG&amp;">GOOG
is underperforming both the NASDAQ and DOW Jones industrial average this year</a>)
then you need to have a better career plan for your employees that goes beyond “free
lunches and all the foosball you can handle".
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
There is no legacy code at a startup. When your code base is young, it isn’t a big
deal to have developers checking in new features after an overnight coding fit powered
by caffeine and pizza. For the most part, the code base shouldn’t be large enough
or interdependent enough for one change to cause issues. However it is practically
a law of software development that the older your code gets the more lines of code
it accumulates and the more closely coupled your modules become. This means changing
things in one part of the code can have adverse effects in another.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
As all organizations mature they tend to add PROCESS. These processes exist to insulate
the companies from the mistakes that occur after a company gets to a certain size
and can no longer trust its employees to always do the right thing. Requiring code
reviews, design specifications, black box &amp; whitebox &amp; unit testing, usability
studies, threat models, etc are all the kinds of <em><u>overhead</u></em> that differentiate
a mature software development shop from a “fly by the seat of your pants” startup.
However once you’ve been through enough fire drills, some of those processes don’t
sound as bad as they once did. This is why senior developers value them while junior
developers don’t since the latter haven’t been around the block enough.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
There is less politics at a startup. In any activity where humans have to come together
collaboratively to achieve a goal, there will always be people with different agendas.
The more people you add to the mix, the more agendas you have to contend with. Doing
things by consensus is OK when you have to get consensus from two or three people
who sit in the same hallway as you. It’s a totally different ball game when you need
to gain it from lots of people from across a diverse company working on different
projects in different regions of the world who have different perspectives on how
to solve your problems. At Google, even <a href="http://valleywag.com/tech/google/google-checks-applicants-undergrad-gpa-156925.php#c66653">hiring
an undergraduate candidate has to go through several layers of committees</a> which
means hiring managers need to possess some political savvy if they want to get their
candidates approved.&nbsp; The <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpstyles/460987802/">founders
of Dodgeball quit the Google after their startup was acquired</a> after they realized
that they didn’t have the political savvy to get resources allocated to their project.
</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>
The fact that Google is having problems retaining employees isn't news, Fortune wrote <a title="Where does Google go next?" href="http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune/">an
article about it</a> just a few months ago. The technology press makes it seem like
people are ditching Google for hot startups like FriendFeed and Facebook. However
the truth is more nuanced than that. Now that Google is just another big software
company, lots of people are comparing it to other big software companies like Microsoft
and finding it lacking.
</p>
<p>
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In the past year I've spent a lot of time thinking about hiring due to a recent surge
in the amount of interviews I've participated in as well as a surge in the number
of folks I know who've decided to "try new things". One thing I've noticed is that
software companies and teams within large software companies like Microsoft tend to
fall into two broad camps when it comes to hiring. There are the teams/companies that
seem to attract tons of smart, superstar programmers like a refrigerator door attracts
magnets and then there those that use the beachcomber
technique of sifting through tons of poorly written resumes hoping to find someone
valuable but often ending up with people
who seem valuable but actually aren't (aka good at interviewing, lousy at actually
getting work done).

The "extended interview" (in any form) is the only solution I've ever seen
to the horrible dilemma, How do you hire someone smarter than you? Or even
the simpler problem, How do you identify someone who's actuallySmart,
and Gets Things Done? Interviews alone just don't cut it.
Let me say it more directly, for those of you who haven't taken this personally yet:
you can't do what Joel is asking you to do. You're not qualified. The Smart and
Gets Things Done approach to interviewing will only get you copies of yourself,
and the work of Dunning
and Kruger implies that if you hire someone better than you are, then it's entirely
accidental.
...
So let's assume you're looking at the vast ocean of programmers, all of whom are self-professed
superstars who've gotten lots of "stuff" done, and you want to identify not the superstars,
but the super-heroes. How do you do it? Well, Brian Dougherty of Geoworks
did it somehow. Jeff Bezos did it somehow. Larry and Sergey did it somehow. I'm willing
to bet good money that every successful tech company out there had some freakishly
good seed engineers.
...
You can only find Done, and Gets Things Smart people in two ways, and one of
them I still don't understand very well. The first way is to get real lucky and have
one as a coworker or classmate. You work with them for a few years and come to realize
they're just cut from a finer cloth than you and your other unwashed cohorts. You
may be friends with some of them, which helps with the recruiting a little, but not
necessarily. The important thing is that you recognize them, even if you
don't know what makes them tick.
...
I think Identification Approach #2, and this is the one I don't understand very well,
is that you "ask around". You know. You manually perform the graph build-and-traversal
done by the Facebook "Smartest Friend" plug-in, where you ask everyone to name the
best engineer they know, and continue doing that until it converges.

This jibes with my experience watching various software startups and knowing the history
of various teams at Microsoft over the past few years. The products that seem to have
hired the most phenomenal programmers and have achieved great things often start off
with some person trying to hire the smartest person they know or knew from past jobs
(Approach #1). Those people in turn try to attract the smartest people they've known
and that happens recursively (Approach #2).

I remember a few years ago chatting with a coworker who mentioned that some Harvard-based
startup was hiring super smart, young Harvard alumni from Microsoft and a couple of
other technology companies at a rapid clip. It seems people were recommended by their
friends at the startup and those folks would in turn come back to Microsoft/Google/etc
to convince their ex-Harvard chums to come join in the fun. It turns out that startup
was Facebook and since then the company has
impressed the world with its output. Google used
to have a similar approach to hiring until the company grew too big and had to
start utilizing the beachcomber technique as well. I've also seen this technique work
successfully for a number of teams at Microsoft.

Although this technique sounds unrealistic, it actually isn't as difficult as it once
was thanks to the Web and social networking sites. It is now quite easy for people
to stay in touch with or reconnect with people they knew from previous jobs or back
in their school days. Thus the big barrier to adopting this approach to hiring isn't
that employees won't have any recommendations for super-smart people they'd love to
work with if given the chance. The real barrier is that most employers don't
know how to court potential employees or even worse don't believe that they have to
do so. Instead they expect people to want to work for them which means
they'll get a flood of awful
resumes, put a bunch of candidates through the
flawed interview process only to eventually get tired of the entire charade and
finally hire
the first warm body to show up after they reach their breaking point. All of this
could be avoided if they simply leverage the social networks of their best employees.
Unfortunately, common sense is never as common as you expect it to be.

How Do You Find the Best Employees for Your Company?http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,ceb08a8e-2720-4db1-a6a7-8d392ba95dca.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/06/19/HowDoYouFindTheBestEmployeesForYourCompany.aspx
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:05:33 GMT<p>
In the past year I've spent a lot of time thinking about hiring due to a recent surge
in the amount of interviews I've participated in as well as a surge in the number
of folks I know who've decided to "try new things". One thing I've noticed is that
software companies and teams within large software companies like Microsoft tend to
fall into two broad camps when it comes to hiring. There are the teams/companies that
seem to attract tons of smart, superstar programmers like a refrigerator door attracts
magnets and then there those that use the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beachcombing">beachcomber
technique</a> of sifting through tons of poorly written resumes hoping to find someone
valuable but often ending up with <a href="http://www.despair.com/med24x30prin.html">people
who seem valuable but actually aren't</a> (aka good at interviewing, lousy at actually
getting work done).
</p>
<p>
Steve Yegge talks about this problem in his post <a href="http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/06/done-and-gets-things-smart.html">Done,
and Gets Things Smart</a> which is excerpted below
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
The "extended interview" (in any form) is the <em>only</em> solution I've ever seen
to the horrible dilemma, <b>How do you hire someone smarter than you?</b> Or even
the simpler problem, How do you identify someone who's <em>actually</em> <b>Smart,
and Gets Things Done</b>? Interviews alone just don't cut it.<br>
Let me say it more directly, for those of you who haven't taken this personally yet:
you can't do what Joel is asking you to do. You're not qualified. The <b>Smart and
Gets Things Done</b> approach to interviewing will only get you copies of yourself,
and the work of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect">Dunning
and Kruger</a> implies that if you hire someone better than you are, then it's entirely
accidental.
<br>
...<br>
So let's assume you're looking at the vast ocean of programmers, all of whom are self-professed
superstars who've gotten lots of "stuff" done, and you want to identify not the superstars,
but the super-<em>heroes</em>. How do you do it? Well, Brian Dougherty of Geoworks
did it somehow. Jeff Bezos did it somehow. Larry and Sergey did it somehow. I'm willing
to bet good money that <em>every</em> successful tech company out there had some freakishly
good seed engineers.
<br>
...<br>
You can only find <b>Done, and Gets Things Smart</b> people in two ways, and one of
them I still don't understand very well. The first way is to get real lucky and have
one as a coworker or classmate. You work with them for a few years and come to realize
they're just cut from a finer cloth than you and your other unwashed cohorts. You
may be friends with some of them, which helps with the recruiting a little, but not
necessarily. The important thing is that you <em>recognize</em> them, even if you
don't know what makes them tick.
<br>
...<br>
I think Identification Approach #2, and this is the one I don't understand very well,
is that you "ask around". You know. You manually perform the graph build-and-traversal
done by the Facebook "Smartest Friend" plug-in, where you ask everyone to name the
best engineer they know, and continue doing that until it converges.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This jibes with my experience watching various software startups and knowing the history
of various teams at Microsoft over the past few years. The products that seem to have
hired the most phenomenal programmers and have achieved great things often start off
with some person trying to hire the smartest person they know or knew from past jobs
(Approach #1). Those people in turn try to attract the smartest people they've known
and that happens recursively (Approach #2).
</p>
<p>
I remember a few years ago chatting with a coworker who mentioned that some Harvard-based
startup was hiring super smart, young Harvard alumni from Microsoft and a couple of
other technology companies at a rapid clip. It seems people were recommended by their
friends at the startup and those folks would in turn come back to Microsoft/Google/etc
to convince their ex-Harvard chums to come join in the fun. It turns out that startup
was <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a> and since then the company has
impressed the world with its output. Google <a href="http://nothing-more.blogspot.com/2006/11/google-jobs-adds-everywhere.html">used
to have a similar approach to hiring</a> until the company grew too big and had to
start utilizing the beachcomber technique as well. I've also seen this technique work
successfully for a number of teams at Microsoft.
</p>
<p>
Although this technique sounds unrealistic, it actually isn't as difficult as it once
was thanks to the Web and social networking sites. It is now quite easy for people
to stay in touch with or reconnect with people they knew from previous jobs or back
in their school days. Thus the big barrier to adopting this approach to hiring isn't
that employees won't have any recommendations for super-smart people they'd <strong><u>love</u></strong> to
work with if given the chance.&nbsp; The real barrier is that most employers don't
know how to court potential employees or even worse don't believe that they have to
do so.&nbsp; Instead they expect people to <em>want</em> to work for them which means
they'll get a flood of <a href="http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/09/ten-tips-for-slightly-less-awful-resume.html">awful
resumes</a>, put a bunch of candidates through <a title="Job Interview 2.0: Now With Riddles!" href="http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Riddle-Me-An-Interview.aspx">the
flawed interview process</a> only to eventually get tired of the entire charade and
finally <a title="The Daily WTF: We Need a Body" href="http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/We-Need-a-Body.aspx">hire
the first warm body to show up after they reach their breaking point</a>. All of this
could be avoided if they simply leverage the social networks of their best employees.
Unfortunately, common sense is never as common as you expect it to be.
</p>
<p>
<b>Now Playing</b>: <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Soundgarden">Soundgarden</a> - <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Soundgarden&amp;songTerm=Jesus Christ Pose">Jesus
Christ Pose</a>
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I've spent all of my professional career working at a large multinational company.
In this time I've been involved in lots of different cross-team and cross-divisional
collaboration efforts. Some times these groups were in the same organization and other
times you would have to go up five to ten levels up the org chart before you found
a shared manager. Surprisingly, the presence or lack of shared management has never
been the key factor that has helped or hindered such collaborative efforts.

Of all the problems I've seen when I've had to depend on other teams for help in getting
a task accomplished or vice versa; there have been two insidious that tend to crop
up in situations where things go awry. The first is misaligned goals.
Just because two groups are working together doesn't mean they have the same motivations
or expected end results. Things quickly go awry when one group's primary goals either
run counter to the goal(s) of the group they are supposed to be collaborating with.
For example, consider a company that requires its technical support to have very low average
call time to meet their metrics. Imagine that same company also puts together
a task force to improve the customer satisfaction with the technical support experience
after lots of complaints from their customers. What are the chances that the task
force will be able to effect positive change if the metrics used to reward their tech
support staff remain the same? The funny thing is that large companies often end up
creating groups that are working at cross purposes yet are supposed to be working
together.

What makes misaligned goals so insidious is that the members of the collaborating
groups who are working through the project often don't realize that the problem is
that their goals are misaligned. A lot of the time people tend to think the problem
is the other group is evil, a bunch of jerks or just plain selfish. The truth is often
that the so-called jerks are really just thinking You're
not my manager, so I'm not going to ask how high when you tell me to jump. Once
you find out you've hit this problem then the path to solving it is clear. You either
have to (i) make sure all collaborating parties want to reach the same outcome and
place have similar priorities or (ii) jettison the collaboration effort.

Another problem that has scuttled many a collaboration effort is when one or more
of the parties involved has undisclosed concerns about the risks of collaborating which
prevents them from entering into the collaboration wholeheartedly or even worse has
them actively working against it. Software development teams experience this when
they have to manage dependences on their project or that they have on other projects.
There's a good paper on the topic entitled Managing Cognitive
and Affective Trust in the Conceptual R&D Organization by Diane H. Sonnenwald
which breaks down the problem of distrust in conceptual organizations (aka virtual
teams) in the following way

Two Types of Trust and Distrust: Cognitive and Affective
Two types of trust, cognitive and affective, have been identified as important
in organizations (McAllister, 1995; Rocco, et al, 2001). Cognitive trust focuses on
judgments of competence and reliability. Can a co-worker complete a task? Will the
results be of sufficient quality? Will the task be completed on time? These are issues
that comprise cognitive trust and distrust. The more strongly one believes the answers
to these types of questions are affirmative, the stronger one’s cognitive trust.
The more strongly one believes the answers to these types of questions are negative,
the stronger one’s cognitive distrust.

Affective trust focuses on interpersonal bonds among individuals and institutions,
including perceptions of colleagues’ motivation, intentions, ethics and citizenship.
Affective trust typically emerges from repeated interactions among individuals, and
experiences of reciprocated interpersonal care and concern (Rosseau, et al, 1998).
It is also referred to as emotional trust (Rocco, et al, 2001) and relational trust
(Rosseau, et al, 1998). It can be “the grease that turns the wheel” (Sonnenwald,
1996).

The issue of affective distrust is strongly related to lacking shared goals while
working together as a team which I've already discussed. Cognitive distrust typically
results in one or more parties in the collaboration acting with the assumption that
the collaboration is going to fail. Since these distrusting group(s) assume failure
will be the end result of the collaboration they will take steps to insulate themselves
from this failure. However what makes this problem insidious is that the "untrusted"
groups are often not formally confronted about the lack of trust in their efforts
and thus risk mitigation is not formally built into the collaboration effort.
Eventually this leads to behavior that is counterproductive to the collaboration as
teams try to mitigate risks in isolation and eventually there is distrust between
all parties in the collaboration. Project failure often soon follows.

The best way to prevent this from happening once you find yourself in this situation
is to put everyone's concerns on the table. Once the concerns are on the table, be
they concerns about product quality, timelines or any of the other myriad issues that
impact collaboration, mitigations can be put in place. As the saying goes sunlight
is the best disinfectant, thus I've also seen that when the "distrusted"
team becomes fully transparent in their workings and information disclosure it quickly
makes matters clear. Because one of two things will happen; it will either (i) reassure
their dependents that their fears are unfounded or (ii) confirm their concerns in
a timely fashion. Either of which is preferable to the status quo.

Two Key Issues that often Hinder Collaboration Between Teams in Large Companieshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,c0dafad3-e479-4be6-b0a9-1912c7e8b905.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/05/17/TwoKeyIssuesThatOftenHinderCollaborationBetweenTeamsInLargeCompanies.aspx
Sat, 17 May 2008 11:52:37 GMT<p>
I've spent all of my professional career working at a large multinational company.
In this time I've been involved in lots of different cross-team and cross-divisional
collaboration efforts. Some times these groups were in the same organization and other
times you would have to go up five to ten levels up the org chart before you found
a shared manager. Surprisingly, the presence or lack of shared management has never
been the key factor that has helped or hindered such collaborative efforts.
</p>
<p>
Of all the problems I've seen when I've had to depend on other teams for help in getting
a task accomplished or vice versa; there have been two insidious that tend to crop
up in situations where things go awry. The first is <strong>misaligned goals</strong>.
Just because two groups are working together doesn't mean they have the same motivations
or expected end results. Things quickly go awry when one group's primary goals either
run counter to the goal(s) of the group they are supposed to be collaborating with.
For example, consider a company that requires its technical support to have very low <a href="http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1183250">average
call time</a> to meet their metrics. Imagine that same company also puts together
a task force to improve the customer satisfaction with the technical support experience
after lots of complaints from their customers. What are the chances that the task
force will be able to effect positive change if the metrics used to reward their tech
support staff remain the same? The funny thing is that large companies often end up
creating groups that are working at cross purposes yet are supposed to be working
together.
</p>
<p>
What makes <em>misaligned goals</em> so insidious is that the members of the collaborating
groups who are working through the project often don't realize that the problem is
that their goals are misaligned. A lot of the time people tend to think the problem
is the other group is evil, a bunch of jerks or just plain selfish. The truth is often
that the so-called jerks are really just thinking <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2007/05/22/2777876.aspx">You're
not my manager, so I'm not going to ask how high when you tell me to jump</a>. Once
you find out you've hit this problem then the path to solving it is clear. You either
have to (i) make sure all collaborating parties want to reach the same outcome and
place have similar priorities or (ii) jettison the collaboration effort.
</p>
<p>
Another problem that has scuttled many a collaboration effort is when one or more
of the parties involved has <strong>undisclosed concerns about the risks of collaborating</strong> which
prevents them from entering into the collaboration wholeheartedly or even worse has
them actively working against it. Software development teams experience this when
they have to manage dependences on their project or that they have on other projects.
There's a good paper on the topic entitled Managing <a href="http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00010634/01/sonnenwald-trust-chapter.pdf">Cognitive
and Affective Trust in the Conceptual R&amp;D Organization</a> by Diane H. Sonnenwald
which breaks down the problem of distrust in conceptual organizations (aka virtual
teams) in the following way
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em><strong>Two Types of Trust and Distrust: Cognitive and Affective
<br />
</strong>Two types of trust, cognitive and affective, have been identified as important
in organizations (McAllister, 1995; Rocco, et al, 2001). Cognitive trust focuses on
judgments of competence and reliability. Can a co-worker complete a task? Will the
results be of sufficient quality? Will the task be completed on time? These are issues
that comprise cognitive trust and distrust. The more strongly one believes the answers
to these types of questions are affirmative, the stronger one&#8217;s cognitive trust.
The more strongly one believes the answers to these types of questions are negative,
the stronger one&#8217;s cognitive distrust.</em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Affective trust focuses on interpersonal bonds among individuals and institutions,
including perceptions of colleagues&#8217; motivation, intentions, ethics and citizenship.
Affective trust typically emerges from repeated interactions among individuals, and
experiences of reciprocated interpersonal care and concern (Rosseau, et al, 1998).
It is also referred to as emotional trust (Rocco, et al, 2001) and relational trust
(Rosseau, et al, 1998). It can be &#8220;the grease that turns the wheel&#8221; (Sonnenwald,
1996).</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
The issue of affective distrust is strongly related to lacking shared goals while
working together as a team which I've already discussed. Cognitive distrust typically
results in one or more parties in the collaboration acting with the assumption that
the collaboration is going to fail. Since these distrusting group(s) assume failure
will be the end result of the collaboration they will take steps to insulate themselves
from this failure. However what makes this problem insidious is that the &quot;untrusted&quot;
groups are often not formally confronted about the lack of trust in their efforts
and thus <em><u>risk mitigation is not formally built into the collaboration effort</u></em>.
Eventually this leads to behavior that is counterproductive to the collaboration as
teams try to mitigate risks in isolation and eventually there is distrust between
all parties in the collaboration. Project failure often soon follows.
</p>
<p>
The best way to prevent this from happening once you find yourself in this situation
is to put everyone's concerns on the table. Once the concerns are on the table, be
they concerns about product quality, timelines or any of the other myriad issues that
impact collaboration, mitigations can be put in place. As the saying goes <a href="http://thesophist.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant/">sunlight
is the best disinfectant</a>, thus I've also seen that when the &quot;distrusted&quot;
team becomes fully transparent in their workings and information disclosure it quickly
makes matters clear. Because one of two things will happen; it will either (i) reassure
their dependents that their fears are unfounded or (ii) confirm their concerns in
a timely fashion. Either of which is preferable to the status quo.
</p>
<p>
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Control (featuring Damian Marley)</a>
</p>
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I’ve been writing a personal weblog for almost seven years. It’s weird to go back
and read some of the posts in my
old kuro5hin diary such as my earlypostings about interning at Microsoft and
see how much my perspectives have changed in some ways and stayed the same in
others. Anyway…

Although I’ve found this weblog to be personally fulfilling, the time has come for
me to put it aside for the time being. This will be the last post on http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog.

In addition, I’ll be cleaning up my Twitter and Facebook
profiles by removing anyone who I haven’t personally met from my list of followers
and friends respectively.

I will continue to work on and blog about RSS
Bandit. I haven’t yet picked a location for a new blog for the project. However
this shouldn’t impact subscribers to my RSS Bandit feed since it is already
hosted on Feedburner and a redirect shouldn’t be noticeable.

Indefinite Hiatushttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,45395dfd-4f16-4580-b382-5c6525a04dfe.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/03/05/IndefiniteHiatus.aspx
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 04:00:02 GMT<p>
</p>
<p>
I’ve been writing a personal weblog for almost seven years. It’s weird to go back
and read some of&nbsp;the&nbsp;posts in <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/Carnage4Life/diary/">my
old kuro5hin diary</a> such as&nbsp;my <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/4/3/183110/2637">early</a> <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/4/18/205215/360">postings</a> about <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/7/17/45430/1035">interning</a> at <a href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/8/23/143615/290">Microsoft</a>&nbsp;and
see how much&nbsp;my perspectives have changed in some ways and stayed the same in
others. Anyway…
</p>
<p>
Although I’ve found this weblog to be personally fulfilling, the time has come for
me to put it aside for the time being. This will be the last post on <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog">http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog</a>.
</p>
<p>
In addition, I’ll be cleaning up my <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Carnage4Life">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/people/Dare_Obasanjo/500050028">Facebook
profiles</a> by removing anyone who I haven’t personally met from my list of followers
and friends respectively.
</p>
<p>
I will continue to work on and blog about <a href="http://www.rssbandit.org/">RSS
Bandit</a>. I haven’t yet picked a location for a new blog for the project.&nbsp;However
this shouldn’t impact subscribers to my&nbsp;RSS Bandit&nbsp;feed since it is already
hosted on Feedburner and a redirect shouldn’t be noticeable.
</p>
<p>
Thanks&nbsp;for everything.
</p>
<p>
<em>PS: See also </em><a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView.aspx?guid=e68c4e1b-f50a-4153-ab7a-b4a260e3babf"><em>The
Year the Blog Died</em></a><em>.</em>
</p>
<p>
<strong>Now playing:</strong> <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Boyz%20II%20Men">Boyz
II Men</a> - <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=End%20of%20the%20Road&amp;artistTerm=Boyz%20II%20Men">End
of the Road</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=45395dfd-4f16-4580-b382-5c6525a04dfe" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,45395dfd-4f16-4580-b382-5c6525a04dfe.aspxLife in the B0rg CubePersonalhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3cehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3ce.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3ce.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3ce1Microsoft Announces Data Portability Principles for Office 2007, Exchange Server 2008, Office Sharepoint Server 2007, and Windows Server 2008http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3ce.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/02/21/MicrosoftAnnouncesDataPortabilityPrinciplesForOffice2007ExchangeServer2008OfficeSharepointServer2007AndWindowsServer2008.aspx
Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:17:27 GMT<p>
</p>
<p>
From the press release entitled&nbsp;<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-21ExpandInteroperabilityPR.mspx">Microsoft
Makes Strategic Changes in Technology and Business Practices to Expand Interoperability</a> we
learn
</p>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<p>
<em><b>REDMOND, Wash. &mdash; Feb. 21, 2008 &mdash; </b>Microsoft Corp. today announced
a set of broad-reaching changes to its technology and business practices to increase
the openness of its products and drive greater interoperability, opportunity and choice
for developers, partners, customers and competitors. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>Specifically, Microsoft is implementing four new interoperability principles and
corresponding actions across its high-volume business products: (1) ensuring open
connections; (2) promoting data portability; (3) enhancing support for industry standards;
and (4) fostering more open engagement with customers and the industry, including
open source communities.<br />
...<br />
The interoperability principles and actions announced today apply to the following
high-volume Microsoft products: Windows Vista (including the .NET Framework), Windows
Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Office 2007, Exchange Server 2007, and Office SharePoint
Server 2007, and future versions of all these products. Highlights of the specific
actions Microsoft is taking to implement its new interoperability principles are described
below.</em>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<em><strong>Ensuring open connections to Microsoft&rsquo;s high-volume products</strong>. </em>
</li>
<li>
<em><strong>Documenting how Microsoft supports industry standards and extensions</strong>. </em>
</li>
<li>
<em><strong>Enhancing Office 2007 to provide greater flexibility of document formats</strong>. </em>
</li>
<li>
<em><strong>Launching the Open Source Interoperability Initiative</strong>. </em>
</li>
<li>
<em><strong>Expanding industry outreach and dialogue</strong>.</em>
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr">
More information can be found on&nbsp;the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/interop/">Microsoft
Interoperability page</a>. Nice job, ROzzie and SteveB.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Now playing:</strong> <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Timbaland">Timbaland</a> - <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=Apologize (Feat. One Republic)&amp;artistTerm=Timbaland">Apologize
(Feat. One Republic)</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3ce" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b1fdc0ef-64d3-47dc-aca8-a6e8c928b3ce.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f595http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f595.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f595.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f5956

To tell you the truth, if you had pulled me aside when I was in school, holding
court in the computer science lab, and whispered in my ear ala The Graduate: "online
ads..." I would have laughed my geek butt off.

So Google gets to have the joke on me, but for us to bet the company and build
Microsoft's future foundation on ads revenue? WTF? As someone who considers themselves
a citizen,
not a consumer, I want to create software experiences that make people's
lives delightful and better, not that sells them crap they don't need while putting
them deeper into debt. I'm going to be in purgatory long enough as is.

I find this sentiment somewhat ironic coming from Mini-Microsoft. Microsoft’s bread
and butter comes from selling software that people have to use not software
that they want to use. In fact, you can argue that the fundamental
problems the company has had in making traction in certain consumer-centric markets
is that our culture is still influenced by selling to IT departments and developers
(i.e. where features and checklists are important) as opposed to selling to consumers
(i.e. where user experience is the most important thing).

Specifically, it is hard for me to imagine that there are more people in the world
that think that whatever Microsoft product Mini works on has given them more delight
or improved their lives better than Facebook, Flickr, Google, MySpace or Windows
Live Messenger which happen to all be ad supported software. Thus it amusing to
see him imply that ad-supported software is the antithesis of software that delights
and improves peoples quality of life.

The way I see it, Jerry Yang is right that from the perspective of a user “You Always
Have Other Options” when it comes free (ad supported), Web-based software
which encourages applications to innovate in the user experience to differentiate
themselves. It is no small wonder that we’ve seen more innovations in social applications
and user interfaces in the world of free, Web-based applications than we’ve seen in
the world of proprietary, commercial software. Something to think about the
next time you decide to crap on ad supported Web apps because you think building commercial
software is some sort of noble cause that results in perfect, customer delighting
software, Mini.

To Mini-Microsoft: On Building Software Experiences that Delight Usershttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f595.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/02/12/ToMiniMicrosoftOnBuildingSoftwareExperiencesThatDelightUsers.aspx
Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:00:05 GMT<p>
</p>
<p>
Mini-Microsoft has a blog post entitled&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/02/microsofts-yahoo-acquisition-is-bold.html">Microsoft's
Yahoo! Acquisition is Bold. And Dumb.</a>&nbsp;which contains the following excerpt
</p>
<blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
<p>
<em>To tell you the truth, if you had pulled me aside when I was in school, holding
court in the computer science lab, and whispered in my ear ala The Graduate: "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 128);">online
ads...</span>" I would have laughed my geek butt off. </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>So Google gets to have the joke on me, but for us to bet the company and build
Microsoft's future foundation on ads revenue? WTF? As someone who considers themselves
a </em><a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/350593_faith09.html"><em>citizen,
not a consumer,</em></a><em> I want to create software experiences that make people's
lives delightful and better, not that sells them crap they don't need while putting
them deeper into debt. I'm going to be in purgatory long enough as is.</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
I find this sentiment somewhat ironic coming from Mini-Microsoft. Microsoft’s bread
and butter comes from selling software that people <em>have</em> to use not software
that they <strong>want</strong> to use. In fact, you can argue that the fundamental
problems the company has had in making traction in certain consumer-centric markets
is that our culture is still influenced by selling to IT departments and developers
(i.e. where features and checklists are important) as opposed to selling to consumers
(i.e. where user experience is the most important thing).
</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
Specifically, it is hard for me to imagine that there are more people in the world
that think that whatever Microsoft product Mini works on has given them more delight
or improved their lives better than <a href="http://www.facebook.com/">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/">Flickr</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>, <a href="http://www.myspace.com/">MySpace </a>or <a href="http://messenger.live.com/">Windows
Live Messenger</a> which happen to all be ad supported software. Thus it amusing to
see him imply that ad-supported software is the antithesis of software that delights
and improves peoples quality of life.&nbsp;
</p>
<p dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;">
The way I see it, Jerry Yang is right that from the perspective of a user “You Always
Have Other Options”&nbsp;when it comes&nbsp;free (ad supported), Web-based software
which encourages applications to innovate in the user experience to differentiate
themselves. It is no small wonder that we’ve seen more innovations in social applications
and user interfaces in the world of free, Web-based applications than we’ve seen in
the world of proprietary, commercial software.&nbsp; <i>Something to think about the
next time you decide to crap on ad supported Web apps because you think building commercial
software is some sort of noble cause that results in perfect, customer delighting
software, Mini</i>.
<br>
</p>
<p>
<strong>Now playing:</strong> <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Snoop%20Doggy%20Dogg">Snoop
Doggy Dogg</a> - <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=Downtown%20Assassins&amp;artistTerm=Snoop%20Doggy%20Dogg">Downtown
Assassins</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f595" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,94dc1672-c789-4a34-a259-bf13dc28f595.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4chttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4c1

Given that I work in Microsoft's online services group and have friends at Yahoo!,
I obviously won't be writing down my thoughts on Microsoft's
$44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. However I have been somewhat amused by the kind of
ranting I've seen in the comments
at Mini-Microsoft. Although the majority of the comments on Mini-Microsoft are
critical of the bid, it is clear that the majority of the posters aren't very knowledgeable
about Microsoft, it's competitors or the online business in general.

There were comments from people who are so out of it they think Paul Allen is a majority
share holder of Microsoft. Or even better that Internet advertising will never impact
newspaper, magazine or television advertising. I was also amused by the person that
asked if anyone could name 2 or 3 successful acquisitions or technology purchases
by Microsoft. I wonder if anyone would say the Bungie or Visio acquisitions
didn't work out for the company. Or that the products that started off as NCSA Mosaic
or Sybase SQL have been unsuccessful as Microsoft products.

My question for the armchair quarterbacks that have criticized this move in places
like Mini-Microsoft is "If you ran the world's most successful software company,
what would you do instead?"

PS: The ostrich strategy of "ignoring the Internet" and
milking the Office + Windows cash cows doesn't count as an acceptable answer. Try
harder than that.

MSFT + YHOO: Question for the Armchair Quarterbackshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/02/03/MSFTYHOOQuestionForTheArmchairQuarterbacks.aspx
Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:19:49 GMT<p>
Given that I work in Microsoft's online services group and have friends at Yahoo!,
I obviously won't be writing down my thoughts on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/02/technology/02soft.html?_r=1&amp;ex=1359694800&amp;en=c407bbf2504247c0&amp;ei=5088&amp;partner=rssnyt&amp;emc=rss&amp;oref=slogin">Microsoft's
$44.6 billion bid for Yahoo</a>. However I have been somewhat amused by the kind of
ranting I've seen in the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7555958&amp;postID=31062251148521557">comments
at Mini-Microsoft</a>. Although the majority of the comments on Mini-Microsoft are
critical of the bid, it is clear that the majority of the posters aren't very knowledgeable
about Microsoft, it's competitors or the online business in general.
</p>
<p>
There were comments from people who are so out of it they think Paul Allen is a majority
share holder of Microsoft. Or even better that Internet advertising will never impact
newspaper, magazine or television advertising. I was also amused by the person that
asked if anyone could name 2 or 3 successful acquisitions or technology purchases
by Microsoft. I wonder if anyone would say the&#160; Bungie or Visio acquisitions
didn't work out for the company. Or that the products that started off as NCSA Mosaic
or Sybase SQL have been unsuccessful as Microsoft products.
</p>
<p>
My question for the armchair quarterbacks that have criticized this move in places
like Mini-Microsoft is &quot;If you ran the world's most successful software company,
what would you do instead?&quot;
</p>
<p>
<strong>PS:</strong> The ostrich strategy of &quot;ignoring the Internet&quot; and
milking the Office + Windows cash cows doesn't count as an acceptable answer. Try
harder than that.
</p>
<p>
<b>Now Playing</b>: <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Birdman ">Birdman </a>- <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Birdman &amp;songTerm=Hundred Million Dollars (feat. Rick Ross, Lil' Wayne &amp; Young Jeezy)">Hundred
Million Dollars (feat. Rick Ross, Lil' Wayne &amp; Young Jeezy)</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4c" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,8647a174-ce9b-4bb7-a827-499a27adfe4c.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f3135391http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f3135391.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f3135391.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f31353911

REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 1, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT)
today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board
of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per
share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6
billion. Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to
receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total
consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half
Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium
above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly
exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming
better positioned to compete in the online services market,” said Steve Ballmer,
chief executive officer of Microsoft. “We believe our combination will deliver
superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to
our customers and industry partners.”

“Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively
transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling,
high-scale services and infrastructure,” said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect
at Microsoft. “The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly
deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would
have achieved on our own.”

Microsoft Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 a Sharehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f3135391.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2008/02/01/MicrosoftProposesAcquisitionOfYahooFor31AShare.aspx
Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:52:34 GMT<p>
From the press release entitled <a title="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-01CorpNewsPR.mspx" href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-01CorpNewsPR.mspx">Microsoft
Proposes Acquisition of Yahoo! for $31 per Share</a> we learn
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em><b>REDMOND, Wash. &#8212; Feb. 1, 2008 &#8212; </b>Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT)
today announced that it has made a proposal to the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Board
of Directors to acquire all the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per
share consideration of $31 representing a total equity value of approximately $44.6
billion. Microsoft&#8217;s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to
receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total
consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half
Microsoft common stock. <font color="#ff0000">The offer represents a 62 percent premium
above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.</font> </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>&#8220;We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly
exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming
better positioned to compete in the online services market,&#8221; said Steve Ballmer,
chief executive officer of Microsoft. &#8220;We believe our combination will deliver
superior value to our respective shareholders and better choice and innovation to
our customers and industry partners.&#8221; </em>
</p>
<p>
<em>&#8220;Our lives, our businesses, and even our society have been progressively
transformed by the Web, and Yahoo! has played a pioneering role by building compelling,
high-scale services and infrastructure,&#8221; said Ray Ozzie, chief software architect
at Microsoft. &#8220;The combination of these two great teams would enable us to jointly
deliver a broad range of new experiences to our customers that neither of us would
have achieved on our own.&#8221;</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
WOW. Just...wow.
</p>
<p>
There's a <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-01CorpNewsMA.mspx">conference
call with Ray Ozzie, Steve Ballmer, Chris Liddell and Kevin Johnson in about half
an hour</a> to discuss this. This is the first time I've considered listening in on
one of those.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f3135391" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,4d637700-379a-4371-ab2f-a4b5f3135391.aspxCompetitors/Web CompaniesLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aabhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aab.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aab.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aab3Dinosaur Country reduxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aab.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/10/02/DinosaurCountryRedux.aspx
Tue, 02 Oct 2007 14:20:23 GMT<p>
Over a year ago, I commented that sometimes it feels like <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/01/06/DinosaurCountry.aspx">working
at Microsoft is like working in Dinosaur Country</a>. Every time, I hear the phrase
&ldquo;software as a service&rdquo; or it&rsquo;s cousin &ldquo;software plus services&rdquo;
it makes me feel this way. Most of the people uttering this crap don&rsquo;t realize
that this makes them sound as dated as the old codgers who kept on&nbsp;talking about&nbsp;&ldquo;horseless
carriages&rdquo; when everyone else called them automobiles or just plain&nbsp;<strong>cars</strong>.
</p>
<p>
Case in point, this article from the Telegraph entitled <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/02/cnmicro102.xml">Microsoft
powers up for change</a>&nbsp;which contains this humdinger of an opening paragrapgh
</p>
<blockquote>
<p class="story">
<b><em>Chief executive says <font color="#ff0000">free software, downloadable online,
is on the horizon for consumers</font>. Josephine Moulds reports</em></b>
</p>
<p class="story">
<em>Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, yesterday signalled another step
towards a dramatic change in the software giant's business model.</em>
</p>
<p class="story">
<em>In London on a whistle-stop tour, Ballmer was <font color="#ff0000">discussing
the delivery of software packages over the internet</font>. "We are a software company,
and yet in a sense, the very form of our core capability is changing. We need to change
our capabilities so that we are not just good at writing bits that you put out on
CD and deliver, but rather writing this thing that is a living, breathing, dynamic,
organic thing."</em>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
What&rsquo;s next? A press release announcing that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization">pasteurization</a>&nbsp;may
not be a fad? A news story conceding that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Aircraft&amp;oldid=161134490#Heavier_than_air_.E2.80.94_aerodynes">heavier-than-air
aircraft</a>&nbsp;may just be the way to go after all?&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
*sigh*
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
<strong>Now playing:</strong> <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=The Verve">The
Verve</a> - <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=Bitter Sweet Symphony&amp;artistTerm=The Verve">Bitter
Sweet Symphony</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aab" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,c082ef53-138b-45a6-a513-a8ebf2292aab.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6bhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6b.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6b.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6b4

It was clear from the presentation that many of the growth prospects will take
5-10 years to bear fruit.

The company overspends ("nothing would delight analysts more than a nice big round
of cost-cutting.")

The businesses MSFT says it's entering (e.g. advertising and consumer electronics)
are far more cut-throat than its current mix.

Microsoft's focus on building internet infrastructure rather
than building sites that bring in users is "backward."

Bill Gates's plan to pass control of product development to Ray Ozzie "will not
be a smooth one."

RE: Item #4, it seems weird for analysts to say Microsoft shouldn’t invest in building
internet infrastructure but instead on building websites. What do they think you need
to build the websites? It’s not like data centers are free.

MSFT Investment Needs More Patience?http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6b.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/08/01/MSFTInvestmentNeedsMorePatience.aspx
Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:42:07 GMT<p>
Via <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/08/gone-fishin.html">Mini-Microsoft</a> I
found the article <a href="http://software.seekingalpha.com/article/42754">Microsoft
Investment Requires Too Much Patience - Barron's</a> which contains the following
excerpt
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Some of the issues that worry analysts:</em>
</p>
<ol>
<ol>
<li>
<em>It was clear from the presentation that many of the growth prospects will take
5-10 years to bear fruit. </em>
</li>
<li>
<em>The company overspends ("nothing would delight analysts more than a nice big round
of cost-cutting.") </em>
</li>
<li>
<em>The businesses MSFT says it's entering (e.g. advertising and consumer electronics)
are far more cut-throat than its current mix. </em>
</li>
<li>
<em><font color="#ff0000">Microsoft's focus on building internet infrastructure rather
than building sites that bring in users is "backward."</font> </em>
</li>
<li>
<em>Bill Gates's plan to pass control of product development to Ray Ozzie "will not
be a smooth one."</em>
</li>
</ol>
>
</blockquote>
<p>
RE: Item #4, it seems weird for analysts to say Microsoft shouldn’t invest in building
internet infrastructure but instead on building websites. What do they think you need
to build the websites? It’s not like data centers are free.
</p>
<p>
<strong>Now playing:</strong> <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Kanye%20West">Kanye
West</a> - <a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?songTerm=Stronger%20%28feat.%20Daft%20Punk%29&amp;artistTerm=Kanye%20West">Stronger
(feat. Daft Punk)</a>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6b" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,7b640cdb-5e7f-4eb2-9fe4-d6629cda4d6b.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a78http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a78.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a78.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a782

Charlie Kindel just announced
on the Windows Home Server team blog that the final version of the software has
been released to manufacturing (RTM). This means that you'll be able to buy a dedicated
home server from Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, HP, Iomega, Lacie or Medion in the next
few months.

Windows Home Server shipshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a78.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/07/16/WindowsHomeServerShips.aspx
Mon, 16 Jul 2007 17:57:23 GMT<p>
Charlie Kindel just <a href="http://blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2007/07/16/ship-it.aspx">announced
on the Windows Home Server team blog</a> that the final version of the software has
been released to manufacturing (RTM). This means that you'll be able to buy a dedicated
home server from Fujitsu-Siemens, Gateway, HP, Iomega, Lacie or Medion in the next
few months.
</p>
<p>
I wonder if that means we'll soon be seeing <a href="http://www.twango.com/media.aspx?media=KarinM.10756&amp;channelname=KarinM.weird">the
following ad</a> on TV?
</p>
<embed src="http://www.twango.com/flash/player.aspx?media=KarinM.10756&amp;channelname=KarinM.weird" width="512" height="420" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a78" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,94c6d5b3-0388-45a1-ac7d-b85a863a3a78.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e8http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e8.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e8.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e87

Marc Andreessen (whose blog is on fire!)
has a rather lengthy but excellent blog post entitled The
Pmarca Guide to Big Companies, part 2: Retaining great people which has some good
advice on how big companies can retain their best employees. The most interesting
aspects of his post were some of the accurate observations he had about obviously
bad ideas that big companies implement which are intended to retain their best employees
but end up backfiring. I thought these insights were valuable enough that they are
worth repeating.

Marc writes

Don't create a new group or organization within your company whose job is "innovation". This
takes various forms, but it happens reasonably often when a big company gets into
product trouble, and it's hugely damaging.

Here's why:

First, you send the terrible message to the rest of the organization that they're
not supposed to innovate.

Second, you send the terrible message to the rest of the organization that you think
they're the B team.

That's a one-two punch that will seriously screw things up.

This so true. Every time I've seen some executive or management higher up create an incubation or innovation team
within a specific product group, it has lead to demoralization of the people who have
been relegated as the "B team" and bad blood between both teams which eventually leads
to in-fighting. All of this might be worth it if these efforts are successful but
as Clayton Christensen pointed out in his
interview in Business Week on the tenth anniversary of "The Innovator's Dilemma"

People come up with lots of new ideas, but nothing happens. They get very disillusioned. Never
does an idea pop out of a person's head as a completely fleshed-out business plan.
It has to go through a process that will get approved and funded. You're not
two weeks into the process until you realize, "gosh, the sales force is not going
to sell this thing," and you change the economics. Then two weeks later, marketing
says they won't support it because it doesn't fit the brand, so we've got to change
the whole concept.

All those forces act to make the idea conform to the company's
existing business model, not to the marketplace. And that's the rub. So the
senior managers today, thirsty for innovation, stand at the outlet of this pipe, see
the dribbling out of me-too innovation after me-too innovation, and they scream up
to the back end, "Hey, you guys, get more innovative! We need more and better innovative
ideas!" But that's not the problem. The problem is this shaping process that conforms
all these innovative ideas to the current business model of the company.

This is something I've seen happen time after time. There are times when incubation/innovation
teams produce worthwhile results but they are few and far between especially compared
to the number of them that exist. In addition, even in those cases both of Marc's
observations were still correct and they led to in-fighting between the teams which
damaged the overall health of the product, the people and the organization.

Marc also wrote

Don't do arbitrary large spot bonuses or restricted stock grants to try to give
a small number of people huge financial upside.

It sounds like a great idea at the time, but it causes a severe backlash among both
the normal people who don't get it (who feel like they're the B team) and the great people
who don't get it (who feel like they've been screwed).

Significantly differentiated financial rewards for your "best employees" are
a seductive idea for executives but they rarely work as planned for several reasons.
One reason is based on an observation I first saw in Paul Graham's essay Hiring
is Obsolete; big companies don't know how to value the contributions of individual
employees. Robert Scoble often used to complain
in the comments to his blog that he made less than six figures at Microsoft. I personally
think he did more for the company's image than the millions we've spent on high priced
public relations and advertising firms. Yet it is incredibly difficult to prove this
and even if one could the process wouldn't scale to every single employee. Then there's
all the research from various corporations that have used social network analysis
to find out that their most valuable employees are rarely the ones that are high up
in the org chart (see How Org Charts
Lie published by the Harvard Business School). The second reason significantly
financially rewarding your "best employees" ends up being problematic is well described
in Joel Spolsky's article Incentive
Pay Considered Harmful where he points out

Most people think that they do pretty good work (even if they don't).
It's just a little trick our minds play on us to keep life bearable. So if everybody
thinks they do good work, and the reviews are merely correct (which is not
very easy to achieve), then most people will be disappointed by their reviews.

When you combine the above observation with the act if rewarding does that get good
reviews disproportionately from those that just did OK, it can lead to problems. For
example, what happens when a company decides that it will give millions of dollars
in bonuses to its employees if they "add the most value" to the company? Hey, isn't
that what the Google Founder's
Awards were supposed to be about...how
did that turn out?

The company has continually tinkered with its incentives for people to stay. Early
on Page and Brin gave "Founders' Awards" in cash to people who made significant contributions.
The handful of employees who pulled off the unusual Dutch auction public offering
in August 2004 shared $10 million. The idea was to replicate the windfall rewards
of a startup, but it backfired because those who didn't get them felt overlooked. "It
ended up pissing way more people off," says one veteran.

Google rarely gives Founders' Awards now, preferring to dole out smaller executive
awards, often augmented by in- person visits by Page and Brin. "We are still trying
to capture the energy of a startup," says Bock.

Another seductive idea that sounds good on paper which falls apart when
you actually add human beings to the equation.
Stupid Things Big Companies Dohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e8.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/07/05/StupidThingsBigCompaniesDo.aspx
Thu, 05 Jul 2007 15:58:26 GMT<p>
Marc Andreessen (whose blog is on <font color="#ff0000">f</font><font color="#ffa500">i</font><font color="#ff0000">r</font><font color="#ffa500">e<font color="#ffff00">!</font></font>)
has a rather lengthy but excellent blog post entitled <a href="http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/07/the-pmarca-gu-1.html" title="The Pmarca Guide to Big Companies, part 2: Retaining great people">The
Pmarca Guide to Big Companies, part 2: Retaining great people</a> which has some good
advice on how big companies can retain their best employees. The most interesting
aspects of his post were some of the accurate observations he had about obviously
bad ideas that big companies implement which are intended to retain their best employees
but end up backfiring. I thought these insights were valuable enough that they are
worth repeating.
</p>
<p>
Marc writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Don't create a new group or organization within your company whose job is "innovation".</em> This
takes various forms, but it happens reasonably often when a big company gets into
product trouble, and it's hugely damaging.
</p>
<p>
Here's why:
</p>
<p>
First, you send the terrible message to the rest of the organization that they're
not supposed to innovate.
</p>
<p>
Second, you send the terrible message to the rest of the organization that you think
they're the B team.
</p>
<p>
That's a one-two punch that will seriously screw things up.
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This so true. Every time I've seen some executive or management higher up create an <i>incubation </i>or <b>innovation </b>team
within a specific product group, it has lead to demoralization of the people who have
been relegated as the "B team" and bad blood between both teams which eventually leads
to in-fighting. All of this might be worth it if these efforts are successful but
as Clayton Christensen pointed out in <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/print/innovate/content/jun2007/id20070615_198176.htm">his
interview in Business Week on the tenth anniversary of "The Innovator's Dilemma"</a>
<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
</p>
<p>
<i>People come up with lots of new ideas, but nothing happens. They get very disillusioned. <font color="#ff0000">Never
does an idea pop out of a person's head as a completely fleshed-out business plan.
It has to go through a process that will get approved and funded.</font> You're not
two weeks into the process until you realize, "gosh, the sales force is not going
to sell this thing," and you change the economics. Then two weeks later, marketing
says they won't support it because it doesn't fit the brand, so we've got to change
the whole concept. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i><font color="#ff0000">All those forces act to make the idea conform to the company's
existing business model, not to the marketplace</font>. And that's the rub. So the
senior managers today, thirsty for innovation, stand at the outlet of this pipe, see
the dribbling out of me-too innovation after me-too innovation, and they scream up
to the back end, "Hey, you guys, get more innovative! We need more and better innovative
ideas!" But that's not the problem. The problem is this shaping process that conforms
all these innovative ideas to the current business model of the company.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This is something I've seen happen time after time. There are times when incubation/innovation
teams produce worthwhile results but they are few and far between especially compared
to the number of them that exist. In addition, even in those cases both of Marc's
observations were still correct and they led to in-fighting between the teams which
damaged the overall health of the product, the people and the organization.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
Marc also wrote
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<em>Don't do arbitrary large spot bonuses or restricted stock grants to try to give
a small number of people huge financial upside.</em>
</p>
<p>
An example is the Google Founders' Awards program, which Google has largely <a href="http://members.forbes.com/global/2007/0702/028.html">stopped</a>,
and which <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/06/20/two-top-google-engineers-leave-to-benchmark-capital/">didn't
work anyway</a>.
</p>
<p>
It sounds like a great idea at the time, but it causes a severe backlash among both
the <em>normal</em> people who don't get it (who feel like they're the B team) <em>and</em> the <em>great</em> people
who don't get it (who feel like they've been screwed).
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Significantly differentiated financial rewards for your "best employees"&nbsp; are
a seductive idea for executives but they rarely work as planned for several reasons.
One reason is based on an observation I first saw in Paul Graham's essay <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html">Hiring
is Obsolete</a>; big companies don't know how to value the contributions of individual
employees. <a href="http://scobleizer.com/">Robert Scoble</a> often used to complain
in the comments to his blog that he made less than six figures at Microsoft. I personally
think he did more for the company's image than the millions we've spent on high priced
public relations and advertising firms. Yet it is incredibly difficult to prove this
and even if one could the process wouldn't scale to every single employee. Then there's
all the research from various corporations that have used social network analysis
to find out that their most valuable employees are rarely the ones that are high up
in the org chart (see <a href="http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4171.html">How Org Charts
Lie</a> published by the Harvard Business School). The second reason significantly
financially rewarding your "best employees" ends up being problematic is well described
in Joel Spolsky's article <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html">Incentive
Pay Considered Harmful</a> where he points out
</p>
<blockquote>Most people think that they do pretty good work (even if they don't).
It's just a little trick our minds play on us to keep life bearable. So if everybody
thinks they do good work, and the reviews are merely <i>correct </i>(which is not
very easy to achieve), then <b>most people will be disappointed by their reviews</b>.&nbsp; </blockquote>
<p>
When you combine the above observation with the act if rewarding does that get good
reviews disproportionately from those that just did OK, it can lead to problems. For
example, what happens when a company decides that it will give millions of dollars
in bonuses to its employees if they "add the most value" to the company? Hey, isn't
that what the <a href="http://battellemedia.com/archives/001227.php">Google Founder's
Awards</a> were supposed to be about...<a href="http://members.forbes.com/global/2007/0702/028.html">how
did that turn out</a>?
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>The company has continually tinkered with its incentives for people to stay. Early
on Page and Brin gave "Founders' Awards" in cash to people who made significant contributions.
The handful of employees who pulled off the unusual Dutch auction public offering
in August 2004 shared $10 million. The idea was to replicate the windfall rewards
of a startup, but it backfired because those who didn't get them felt overlooked. <font color="#ff0000">"It
ended up pissing way more people off," says one veteran.</font></i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Google rarely gives Founders' Awards now, preferring to dole out smaller executive
awards, often augmented by in- person visits by Page and Brin. "We are still trying
to capture the energy of a startup," says Bock.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>Another seductive idea that sounds good on paper which falls apart when
you actually add human beings to the equation.
<br>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e8" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,5fdaf382-8099-41a1-848c-5dbc9663a6e8.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeMindless Link Propagationhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d04http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d04.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d04.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d044

Recently an email written by a newly hired Microsoft employee about life as a Google
employee made the rounds on popular geek social news and social bookmarking sites
such as Slashdot, Reddit, del.icio.us and Digg.
The mail was forwarded around and posted to a blog without the permission of its original
author. The author of the email (who should not be confused with the idiot who blogs
at http://no2google.wordpress.com) has
posted a response which puts his email in context in addition to his reaction on seeing
his words splattered across the Internet. In his post entitled My
Words Geoffrey writes

Today my
words got splashed all around the Internet. It’s interesting to see them living
a life of their own outside the context they were created in. I enjoyed seeing it
on Slashdot, reading the thoughtful responses whether they agreed or disagreed, and
laughing out loud at the people who were just there to make noise. It’s fun, in the
abstract, to the be the author of the secret thing everyone is gathered around the
water cooler talking about.

The responses are my personal impressions, communicated to my Microsoft recruiter
in the context of a private 1:1 conversation. A few days after I sent my response
to the recruiter, I saw an anonymized version floating around and being discussed
inside Microsoft. I hadn’t realized at the time that I wrote it that it would be distributed
widely within Microsoft so that was a bit of a shock. To see them distributed all
over the Internet was another shock altogether. The biggest shock was when Mary
Jo Foley over at ZDNet Blogs sent a message
to my personal email account.

Read the rest of his post to see the email
he sent to Mary Jo Foley as well as how he feels about having words he thought were
being shared in private published to tens of thousands of people without his permission
and with no thought to how it would impact him.

RE: Life at Google - The Microsoftie Perspectivehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d04.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/06/29/RELifeAtGoogleTheMicrosoftiePerspective.aspx
Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:55:26 GMT<p>
Recently an email written by a newly hired Microsoft employee about life as a Google
employee made the rounds on popular geek social news and social bookmarking sites
such as <a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/07/06/27/1314219.shtml">Slashdot</a>, <a href="http://reddit.com/info/21glj/comments">Reddit</a>, <a href="http://del.icio.us/url/61692a05b99b4b0c0f4e9814e341808b">del.icio.us</a> and <a href="http://digg.com/microsoft/Life_at_Google_The_Microsoftie_Perspective">Digg</a>.
The mail was forwarded around and posted to a blog without the permission of its original
author. The author of the email (who should not be confused with the idiot who blogs
at <a href="http://no2google.wordpress.com/">http://no2google.wordpress.com</a>) has
posted a response which puts his email in context in addition to his reaction on seeing
his words splattered across the Internet. In his post entitled <a href="http://www.phatbits.com/?p=3">My
Words</a> Geoffrey writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>Today <a href="http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/">my
words</a> got splashed all around the Internet. It’s interesting to see them living
a life of their own outside the context they were created in. I enjoyed seeing it
on Slashdot, reading the thoughtful responses whether they agreed or disagreed, and
laughing out loud at the people who were just there to make noise. It’s fun, in the
abstract, to the be the author of the secret thing everyone is gathered around the
water cooler talking about.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>The responses are my personal impressions, communicated to my Microsoft recruiter
in the context of a private 1:1 conversation. A few days after I sent my response
to the recruiter, I saw an anonymized version floating around and being discussed
inside Microsoft. I hadn’t realized at the time that I wrote it that it would be distributed
widely within Microsoft so that was a bit of a shock. To see them distributed all
over the Internet was another shock altogether. The biggest shock was when <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/">Mary
Jo Foley</a> over at <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/">ZDNet Blogs</a> sent a message
to my personal email account.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Read <a href="http://www.phatbits.com/?p=3">the rest of his post</a> to see the email
he sent to Mary Jo Foley as well as how he feels about having words he thought were
being shared in private published to tens of thousands of people without his permission
and with no thought to how it would impact him.
<br>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d04" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,0d3c2c93-20d2-4183-be07-d32fcbb96d04.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb58991http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb58991.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb58991.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb589912

Disclaimer: This is my opinion. It does not reflect the intentions, strategies,
plans or stated goals of my employer

Jones: Today we’re also releasing a couple of exciting new services from
Windows Live into managed beta testing: Windows Live Photo Gallery
beta and Windows Live Folders beta.

Windows Live Photo Gallery is an upgrade to Windows Vista’s Windows Photo Gallery,
offered at no charge, and enables both Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 customers
to share, edit, organize and print photos and digital home videos... We’re also releasing
Windows Live Folders into managed beta today, which will provide customers with 500
megabytes of online storage at no charge.
...
We’re excited about these services and we see today’s releases as yet another important
step on the path toward the next generation of Windows Live, building on top of the
momentum of other interesting beta releases we’ve shared recently such as Windows
Live Mail beta,Windows Live Messenger beta and Windows
Live Writer beta....soon we’ll begin to offer a single
installer which will give customers the option of an all-in-one download for the full
Windows Live suite of services instead of the separate installation experience
you see today. It’s going to be an exciting area to watch, and there’s a lot more
to come.

PressPass: You talk a lot about a “software plus services” strategy. What does
that mean and how does it apply to what you’re talking about today?

Jones: It’s become a buzz word of sorts in the industry, but it’s a strategy
we truly believe in. The fact that we’re committed to delivering software plus services
means we’re focused on building rich experiences on top of your
Windows PC; services like those offered through Windows Live.

All the items in red font refer to Windows desktop applications in one way or the
other. At this point it now made sense to me why there were three VPs running different
bits of Microsoft's online products and why one of them was also the VP that owned
Windows. The last reorg seems to have divided Microsoft's major tasks in the online
space across the various VPs in the following manner

Steven Sinofsky and Chris
Jones: Adding value to the Windows platform using online services (i.e. building
something similar to iLife + .Mac for Windows
users).

From that perspective, the reorgs make a lot more sense now. The goals and businesses
are different enough that having people singularly focused on each of those tasks
makes more sense than having one person worry about such disparate [and perhaps conflicting]
goals. The interesting question to me is what does it mean for Microsoft's Web-based
Windows Live properties like Windows Live Hotmail, Windows
Live Favorites and Windows Live Spaces if
Microsoft is going to be emphasizing the Windows in Windows Live? I guess we've
already seen announcements some announcements from the mail side like Windows
Live Mail and the Microsoft
Office Outlook Connector now being free.

Thoughts on Microsoft's Online Strategyhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb58991.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/06/27/ThoughtsOnMicrosoftsOnlineStrategy.aspx
Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:00:57 GMT<p>
<i><b>Disclaimer:</b> This is my opinion. It does not reflect the intentions, strategies,
plans or stated goals of my employer</i>
</p>
<p>
Ever since the last Microsoft reorg where <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/03/22/TheOrgChartForMicrosoftsOnlineBusinesses.aspx">it's
Web products were spread out across 3 Vice Presidents</a> I've puzzled about why the
company would want to fragment its product direction in such a competitive space instead
of having a single person responsible for its online strategy.
</p>
<p>
Today, I was reading an interview with Chris Jones, the corporate vice president of
Windows Live Experience Program Management entitled <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/jun07/06-26windowslive.mspx">Windows
Live Moves Into Next Phase with Renewed Focus on Software + Services</a> and a lightbulb
went off in my head. The relevant bits are excerpted below
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i><b>PressPass: What else is Microsoft announcing today?</b></i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>Jones:</b> Today we’re also releasing a couple of exciting new services from
Windows Live into managed beta testing: <font color="#ff0000">Windows Live Photo Gallery
beta</font> and Windows Live Folders beta. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Windows Live Photo Gallery is an upgrade to Windows Vista’s Windows Photo Gallery,
offered at no charge, and enables both Windows Vista and Windows XP SP2 customers
to share, edit, organize and print photos and digital home videos... We’re also releasing
Windows Live Folders into managed beta today, which will provide customers with 500
megabytes of online storage at no charge.<br>
...<br>
We’re excited about these services and we see today’s releases as yet another important
step on the path toward the next generation of Windows Live, building on top of the
momentum of other interesting beta releases we’ve shared recently such as <font color="#ff0000">Windows
Live Mail beta,</font> <font color="#ff0000">Windows Live Messenger beta</font> and <font color="#ff0000">Windows
Live Writer beta</font>....soon we’ll begin to offer <font color="#ff0000">a single
installer which will give customers the option of an all-in-one download for the full
Windows Live suite of services</font> instead of the separate installation experience
you see today. It’s going to be an exciting area to watch, and there’s a lot more
to come.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>PressPass: You talk a lot about a “software plus services” strategy. What does
that mean and how does it apply to what you’re talking about today? </b></i>
</p>
<i><b>Jones:</b> It’s become a buzz word of sorts in the industry, but it’s a strategy
we truly believe in. The fact that we’re committed to delivering software plus services
means <font color="#ff0000">we’re focused on building rich experiences on top of your
Windows PC</font>; services like those offered through Windows Live.</i>
<p>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
All the items in red font refer to Windows desktop applications in one way or the
other. At this point it now made sense to me why there were three VPs running different
bits of Microsoft's online products and why one of them was also the VP that owned
Windows. The last reorg seems to have divided Microsoft's major tasks in the online
space across the various VPs in the following manner<br>
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/nadella/">Satya Nadella</a>: Running
the search + search ads business (i.e. primarily competing with Google search and
AdWords)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/steveberk/">Steve Berkowitz</a>:
Running the content + display ads business (i.e. primarily competing with Yahoo!'s
content and display ad offerings)
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ssinofsky/">Steven Sinofsky</a> and <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/cjones/">Chris
Jones</a>: Adding value to the Windows platform using online services (i.e. building
something similar to iLife + <a href="http://www.apple.com/dotmac/">.Mac</a> for Windows
users).&nbsp;
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>
From that perspective, the reorgs make a lot more sense now. The goals and businesses
are different enough that having people singularly focused on each of those tasks
makes more sense than having one person worry about such disparate [and perhaps conflicting]
goals. The interesting question to me is what does it mean for Microsoft's Web-based
Windows Live properties like&nbsp;<a href="http://mail.live.com">Windows Live Hotmail</a>, <a href="http://favorites.live.com/">Windows
Live Favorites</a> and <a href="http://spaces.live.com">Windows Live Spaces</a> if
Microsoft is going to be emphasizing the <b>Windows</b> in Windows Live? I guess we've
already seen announcements some announcements from the mail side like <a href="http://get.live.com/betas/maildesktop_betas">Windows
Live Mail</a> and the <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7aad7e6a-931e-438a-950c-5e9ea66322d4&amp;displaylang=en">Microsoft
Office Outlook Connector</a> now being free.
<br>
</p>
<p>
Another interesting question is where &nbsp;<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ozzie/">Ray
Ozzie</a> fits in all this.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb58991" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,9a6413dd-b639-4e74-959f-3320feb58991.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeMSNWindows Livehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781dbhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781db.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781db.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781db

Via Todd
Bishop I found the following spoof of Back to the Future starring Christopher
Lloyd (from the actual movie) and Bob
Muglia, Microsoft's senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business. The
spoof takes pot shots at various failed Microsoft "big visions" like WinFS and Hailstorm in
a humorous way. It's good to see our execs being able to make light of our mistakes
in this manner. The full video of the keynote is here.
Embedded below is the first five minutes of the Back to the Future spoof.

Microsoft's "Back to the Future" Spoof Videohttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781db.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/06/07/MicrosoftsBackToTheFutureSpoofVideo.aspx
Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:24:41 GMT<p>
Via <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/116288.asp">Todd
Bishop</a> I found the following spoof of Back to the Future starring <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000502/">Christopher
Lloyd</a> (from the actual movie) and <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/bobmuglia/default.mspx">Bob
Muglia</a>, Microsoft's senior vice president of the Server and Tools Business. The
spoof takes pot shots at various failed Microsoft "big visions" like <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx">WinFS</a> and <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2001/mar01/03-19hailstorm.mspx">Hailstorm</a> in
a humorous way. It's good to see our execs being able to make light of our mistakes
in this manner. The full video of the keynote is <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/winme/0706/29992/teched_.asx">here</a>.
Embedded below is the first five minutes of the Back to the Future spoof.
</p>
<p>
</p>
<embed src="http://images.soapbox.msn.com/flash/soapbox1_1.swf" quality="high" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="c=v&amp;v=b95cebc0-238d-4ea9-af43-6041f339fe9f" height="364" width="432">
<br>
<a href="http://soapbox.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=b95cebc0-238d-4ea9-af43-6041f339fe9f" target="_new" title="Microsoft Back to the Future Parody">Video:
Microsoft Back to the Future Parody</a>
<p>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781db" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,438afb81-1467-4101-8ab4-d631ceb781db.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeMindless Link Propagationhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=3a16d2bd-3af0-454b-9bb6-edc78f8ffe00http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,3a16d2bd-3af0-454b-9bb6-edc78f8ffe00.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,3a16d2bd-3af0-454b-9bb6-edc78f8ffe00.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=3a16d2bd-3af0-454b-9bb6-edc78f8ffe005

If you have time, you really ought to readthewholething.
I've read as much as I can, and here's my analysis.

Right from the start, before tempers flared, Microsoft's representative, Jason
Weber should've done a much better job of convincing Jamie not to release the
express sku. Jason did put a lot of effort in, and Microsoft spent a lot of effort
on this, but Jason sabotaged his own sides efforts right throughout.

The first clear mistake is that Jason should've never referred to Jamie's work
as a "hack". He did this repeatedly -- and it seems to have greatly exacerbated the
situation. What did that wording gain Jason (or Microsoft)? It only worked to insult
the person he was trying to come to agreement with. Name calling doesn't aid negotiation.

When Jamie finally agreed to remove the express version, he wanted a credible reason
to put on his website. Note that Jamie had backed down now, and with good treatment
the thing should've been resolved at that point. Here's the wording that Jason recommended:

"After speaking with Jason Weber from Microsoft I realized that by
adding features to Visual Studio Express I was in breach of the Visual Studio license
agreements and copyrights. I have therefore decided to remove support for the Visual
Studio Express SKU's from TestDriven.Net. Jason was very supportive of TestDriven.Net's
integration into the other Visual Studio 2005 products and I was invited to join the
VSIP program. This would allow me to fly to Redmond each quarter and work closely
with the Visual Studio development team on deeper integration."

This wording is offensive on four levels. One Two Three Four.
That's a lot of offense!

Firstly -- it acts as an advertisement for Jason Weber. Why? Arrogance maybe? He's
lording it over Jamie.

Second -- it supposes that Jason should publicly admit to violations. He need never
admit such a thing.

Third -- it includes mention of breach of "copyright". I don't think such an allegation
ever came up until that point. So this was a fresh insult.

Fourth -- it stings Jamie's pride, by suggesting that he was bribed into agreement.
Ouch

So just when they got close to agreement, Jason effectively kicked Jamie in the
nuts, pissed in his face, poked him in the eye, and danced on his grave.

That's not a winning technique in negotiations.

I believe there is a lesson on negotiating tactics that can be extracted from this
incident. I really hope this situation reaches an amicable conclusion for the sakes
of all parties involved.

One Perspective on Microsoft vs. TestDriven.NEThttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,3a16d2bd-3af0-454b-9bb6-edc78f8ffe00.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/06/04/OnePerspectiveOnMicrosoftVsTestDrivenNET.aspx
Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:36:44 GMT<p>
If you are a member of the Microsoft developer community, you've probably heard of
the recent kerfuffle between Microsoft and the developer of <a href="http://www.testdriven.net/">TestDriven.NET</a> that
was publicized in his blog post <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2007/05/30/microsoft-vs-testdriven-net-express.aspx">Microsoft
vs TestDriven.Net Express</a>. I'm not going to comment directly on the situation
especially since lawyers are involved. However I did find the perspective put forth
by Leon Bambrick in his post <a href="http://www.secretgeek.net/testdrivengate.asp">TestDriven.net-Gate:
Don't Blame Microsoft, Blame Jason Weber</a> to be quite insightful.
</p>
<p>
Leon Bambrick wrote
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>If you have time, you really ought to <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/pages/microsoft-emails-chapter-1.aspx">read</a> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/pages/microsoft-emails-chapter-2.aspx">the</a> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/pages/microsoft-lawyers-chapter-3.aspx">whole</a> <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2007/05/31/microsoft-vs-testdriven-net-31-may-2007.aspx">thing</a>.
I've read as much as I can, and here's my analysis.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Right from the start, before tempers flared, Microsoft's representative, <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa718729.aspx">Jason
Weber</a> should've done a much better job of convincing Jamie not to release the
express sku. Jason did put a lot of effort in, and Microsoft spent a lot of effort
on this, but Jason sabotaged his own sides efforts right throughout.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>The first clear mistake is that Jason should've never referred to Jamie's work
as a "hack". He did this repeatedly -- and it seems to have greatly exacerbated the
situation. What did that wording gain Jason (or Microsoft)? It only worked to insult
the person he was trying to come to agreement with. Name calling doesn't aid negotiation.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>When Jamie finally agreed to remove the express version, he wanted a credible reason
to put on his website. Note that Jamie had backed down now, and with good treatment
the thing should've been resolved at that point. Here's the wording that Jason recommended:</i>
</p>
<blockquote><i>"After speaking with Jason Weber from Microsoft I realized that by
adding features to Visual Studio Express I was in breach of the Visual Studio license
agreements and copyrights. I have therefore decided to remove support for the Visual
Studio Express SKU's from TestDriven.Net. Jason was very supportive of TestDriven.Net's
integration into the other Visual Studio 2005 products and I was invited to join the
VSIP program. This would allow me to fly to Redmond each quarter and work closely
with the Visual Studio development team on deeper integration."</i></blockquote>
<p>
<i>This wording is offensive on <strong>four</strong> levels. One Two Three Four.
That's a lot of offense!</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Firstly -- it acts as an advertisement for Jason Weber. Why? Arrogance maybe? He's
lording it over Jamie.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Second -- it supposes that Jason should publicly admit to violations. He need never
admit such a thing.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Third -- it includes mention of breach of "copyright". I don't think such an allegation
ever came up until that point. So this was a fresh insult.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Fourth -- it stings Jamie's pride, by suggesting that he was bribed into agreement.
Ouch</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>So just when they got close to agreement, Jason effectively kicked Jamie in the
nuts, pissed in his face, poked him in the eye, and danced on his grave.</i>
</p>
<h2><i>That's not a winning technique in negotiations.</i>
</h2>
</blockquote>
<p>
I believe there is a lesson on negotiating tactics that can be extracted from this
incident. I really hope this situation reaches an amicable conclusion for the sakes
of all parties involved.
</p>
<script>
digg_url = 'http://digg.com/programming/Microsoft_s_Arrogance_Clearly_Demonstrated';
</script>
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Matt Warren has an excellent Microsoft history lesson in his blog post entitled The
Origin of LINQ to SQL which explores how LINQ
to SQL (Microsoft's Object/Relational mapping technology with programming language
integration) came to be despite the internal politics at Microsoft which encouraged
the entire company to bet on WinFS.
I'm excerpting a lot of his blog post because I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up
taking it down or redacting it later. He writes

LINQ to SQL, possibly Microsoft’s first OR/M to actually ship in ten
years of trying, was never even supposed to exist.It started out as a humble
Visual Studio project on my desktop machine way back in the fall of 2003
...
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to get the basics up and running. You see, it wasn’t
the first time I’d slapped together an OR/M or modified a language to add query capabilities;
having already designed ObjectSpaces and
parts of C-Omega so
I was certainly up to the task. Fortunately, it gets a lot easier the ‘next’ time
you design and build something, especially if it was you that did the designing before
and you have the opportunity to start over fresh.
...
Why didn’t I start with WinFS? After all, it was all the rage inside the SQL Server
org at the time. Unfortunately, it was the same story as with ObjectSpaces. They were
shipping before us. We weren’t on their radar. Their hubris was bigger than ours.
Not to mention my belief that WinFS was the biggest fiasco I’d ever bore witness to,
but that’s another story.

Yet, part of that story was the impetus to turn LINQ to SQL into an actual product.

WinFS client API even started out as a complete copy of the ObjectSpaces codebase
and had all the same limitations. It just had more political clout as it was being
lead by a figure at a higher-point in the corporate org chart, and so it was positioned
as part of juggernaut that was making a massive internal land grab. We
on the outside used to refer to WinFS as the black hole, forever growing, sucking
up all available resources, letting nothing escape and in the end producing nothing
except possibly a gateway to an alternate reality. Many of our friends and
co-workers had already been sucked in, and the weekly reports and horror stories were
not for the weak-of-heart. It eventually sucked up ObjectSpaces too and in the process
killing it off so that in WinFS v2 it could all be ‘aligned’.

At that point, those of us designing LINQ got a bit worried. There were not too
many in the developer division that believed in the mission of WinFS. As a developer
tool for the masses, something simple that targeted the lower end was paramount. ObjectSpaces
had been it, and now it was gone. There was still some glimmer of possibility that
WinFS v2 might eventually get it right and be useful as a general OR /M tool. But
all hope of that was shot when WinFS was pulled out of Vista and its entire existence
was put in doubt. Had they immediately turned around and brought back ObjectSpaces,
that might have worked, but in the intervening months ObjectSpaces had slipped past
the point of no return for being part of .Net 2.0, turnover within the SQL org was
spiraling out of control, and most of the brain-trust that knew anything about OR/M
had already fled.

That’s when we realized we had no choice. If LINQ was to succeed it needed some
legs to stand on. The ‘mock’ OR/M I was building was shaping up to be a pretty good
contender. We had co-designed it in tandem with LINQ as part of the C# 3.0 design
group and it really was a full-fledged implementation; we just never thought it was
actually going to be a shipping product. It was simply meant to act as a stand-in
for products that now no longer existed. So, for the sake of LINQ and the customer
in general, we took up the OR/M torch officially, announcing our intention internally
and starting the political nightmare that became my life for the next three years.

This takes me back. I had friends who worked on ObjectSpaces and it was quite heart
breaking to see what internal politics can do to passionate folks who once believed
that technologies stand based on merit and not who you know at Microsoft. At least
this story had a happy ending. Passionate people figured out how to navigate the internal
waters at Microsoft and are on track to shipping a really compelling addition to the
developer landscape.

Editor's Note: I added the links to ObjectSpaces and C-Omega to
the excerpts from Matt's post to provide some context.

Surviving WinFS: How LINQ to SQL Came to Behttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,2e56bcd9-8d04-4130-9593-a1fb2a0d72f3.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/05/31/SurvivingWinFSHowLINQToSQLCameToBe.aspx
Thu, 31 May 2007 22:52:56 GMT<p>
Matt Warren has an excellent Microsoft history lesson in his blog post entitled <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/mattwar/archive/2007/05/31/the-origin-of-linq-to-sql.aspx">The
Origin of LINQ to SQL</a> which explores how <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/linq/">LINQ
to SQL</a> (Microsoft's Object/Relational mapping technology with programming language
integration) came to be despite the internal politics at Microsoft which encouraged
the entire company to bet on <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/archive/2006/06/23/644706.aspx">WinFS</a>.
I'm excerpting a lot of his blog post because I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up
taking it down or redacting it later. He writes<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>LINQ to SQL, possibly Microsoft’s first OR/M to actually ship in <font color="#ff0000">ten
years of trying</font>, was never even supposed to exist.It started out as a humble
Visual Studio project on my desktop machine way back in the fall of 2003<br>
...<br>
Luckily, it didn’t take me long to get the basics up and running. You see, it wasn’t
the first time I’d slapped together an OR/M or modified a language to add query capabilities;
having already designed <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971512.aspx">ObjectSpaces</a> and
parts of <a href="http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/01/12/comega.html">C-Omega</a> so
I was certainly up to the task. Fortunately, it gets a lot easier the ‘next’ time
you design and build something, especially if it was you that did the designing before
and you have the opportunity to start over fresh.
<br>
...<br>
Why didn’t I start with WinFS? After all, it was all the rage inside the SQL Server
org at the time. Unfortunately, it was the same story as with ObjectSpaces. They were
shipping before us. We weren’t on their radar. Their hubris was bigger than ours.
Not to mention my belief that WinFS was the biggest fiasco I’d ever bore witness to,
but that’s another story. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> Yet, part of that story was the impetus to turn LINQ to SQL into an actual product. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> WinFS client API even started out as a complete copy of the ObjectSpaces codebase
and had all the same limitations. It just had more political clout as it was being
lead by a figure at a higher-point in the corporate org chart, and so it was positioned
as part of juggernaut that was making a massive internal land grab. <font color="#ff0000">We
on the outside used to refer to WinFS as the black hole, forever growing, sucking
up all available resources, letting nothing escape and in the end producing nothing
except possibly a gateway to an alternate reality</font>. Many of our friends and
co-workers had already been sucked in, and the weekly reports and horror stories were
not for the weak-of-heart. It eventually sucked up ObjectSpaces too and in the process
killing it off so that in WinFS v2 it could all be ‘aligned’. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> At that point, those of us designing LINQ got a bit worried. There were not too
many in the developer division that believed in the mission of WinFS. As a developer
tool for the masses, something simple that targeted the lower end was paramount. ObjectSpaces
had been it, and now it was gone. There was still some glimmer of possibility that
WinFS v2 might eventually get it right and be useful as a general OR /M tool. But
all hope of that was shot when WinFS was pulled out of Vista and its entire existence
was put in doubt. Had they immediately turned around and brought back ObjectSpaces,
that might have worked, but in the intervening months ObjectSpaces had slipped past
the point of no return for being part of .Net 2.0, turnover within the SQL org was
spiraling out of control, and most of the brain-trust that knew anything about OR/M
had already fled. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> That’s when we realized we had no choice. If LINQ was to succeed it needed some
legs to stand on. The ‘mock’ OR/M I was building was shaping up to be a pretty good
contender. We had co-designed it in tandem with LINQ as part of the C# 3.0 design
group and it really was a full-fledged implementation; we just never thought it was
actually going to be a shipping product. It was simply meant to act as a stand-in
for products that now no longer existed. So, for the sake of LINQ and the customer
in general, we took up the OR/M torch officially, announcing our intention internally
and starting the political nightmare that became my life for the next three years.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This takes me back. I had friends who worked on ObjectSpaces and it was quite heart
breaking to see what internal politics can do to passionate folks who once believed
that technologies stand based on merit and not who you know at Microsoft. At least
this story had a happy ending. Passionate people figured out how to navigate the internal
waters at Microsoft and are on track to shipping a really compelling addition to the
developer landscape.
</p>
<p>
<b>Editor's Note:</b> I added the links to <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms971512.aspx">ObjectSpaces</a> and <a href="http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2005/01/12/comega.html">C-Omega</a> to
the excerpts from Matt's post to provide some context.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=2e56bcd9-8d04-4130-9593-a1fb2a0d72f3" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,2e56bcd9-8d04-4130-9593-a1fb2a0d72f3.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93

The PDC stands for “Professional Developer’s Conference.” It happens only when
Microsoft knows it’ll have a major new platform to announce. Usually a new version
of Windows or a new Internet strategy.

So, this means a couple of things: no new Windows and no major new Internet strategy
this year.
...
Now that Google, Amazon, Apple, are shipping platforms that are more and more interesting
to Microsoft’s developer community Microsoft has to play a different game. One where
they can’t keep showing off stuff that never ships. The stakes are going up in the
Internet game and Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a good answer to what’s coming next.

Interesting analysis from Robert, I agree with him that Microsoft no longer has the
luxury of demoing platforms it can't or won't ship given how competent a number of
competitors have shown themselves on the platform front. The official
Microsoft cancellation notice states

As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future
of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones.
By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008,
SQL Server codenamed "Katmai", Visual Studio codenamed "Orcas" and Silverlight will
already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch

This makes sense, all the interesting near term future stuff has already been announced
at other recent events. In fact, when you think about it, it is kinda weird for Microsoft
to have a conference for showing next generation Web platform stuff (i.e. MIX)
and another for showing general next generation platform stuff (i.e. PDC). Especially
since the Web is the only platform that matters these days.

My assumption is that Microsoft conference planners will figure this out and won't
make the mistake of scheduling MIX and PDC a
few months from each other next time. No Microsoft PDC This Yearhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/05/25/NoMicrosoftPDCThisYear.aspx
Fri, 25 May 2007 20:19:00 GMT<p>
Via Robert Scoble's blog post entitled <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/24/microsoft-cancels-pdc/" title="Microsoft postpones PDC">Microsoft
postpones PDC</a> we learn
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>Mary Jo Foley (she’s been covering Microsoft for a long time) has the news: <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=473">Microsoft
has postponed the PDC that it had planned for later this year</a>.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>The PDC stands for “Professional Developer’s Conference.” It happens only when
Microsoft knows it’ll have a major new platform to announce. Usually a new version
of Windows or a new Internet strategy.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>So, this means a couple of things: no new Windows and no major new Internet strategy
this year.
<br>
...<br>
Now that Google, Amazon, Apple, are shipping platforms that are more and more interesting
to Microsoft’s developer community Microsoft has to play a different game. One where
they can’t keep showing off stuff that never ships. The stakes are going up in the
Internet game and Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a good answer to what’s coming next.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Interesting analysis from Robert, I agree with him that Microsoft no longer has the
luxury of demoing platforms it can't or won't ship given how competent a number of
competitors have shown themselves on the platform front. The <a href="http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/events/bb288534.aspx">official
Microsoft cancellation notice</a> states
</p>
<blockquote><i> As the PDC is the definitive developer event focused on the future
of the Microsoft platform, we try to align it to be in front of major platform milestones.
By this fall, however, upcoming platform technologies including Windows Server 2008,
SQL Server codenamed "Katmai", Visual Studio codenamed "Orcas" and Silverlight will
already be in developers’ hands and approaching launch</i> </blockquote>
<p>
This makes sense, all the interesting near term future stuff has already been announced
at other recent events. In fact, when you think about it, it is kinda weird for Microsoft
to have a conference for showing next generation Web platform stuff (i.e. <a href="http://www.visitmix.com">MIX</a>)
and another for showing general next generation platform stuff (i.e. PDC). Especially
since the Web is the only platform that matters these days.
</p>
My assumption is that Microsoft conference planners will figure this out and won't
make the mistake of scheduling <a href="http://www.visitmix.com">MIX</a> and PDC a
few months from each other next time. <img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,2c81b5e4-294a-4a3c-b7d6-38ee65437f93.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeWeb Developmenthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f57http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f57.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f57.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f572

REDMOND, Wash. — May 18, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced
it will acquire aQuantive, Inc., for $66.50 per share in an all-cash transaction valued
at approximately $6 billion. This deal expands upon the Company’s previously outlined
vision to provide the advertising industry with a world class, Internet-wide advertising
platform, as well as a set of tools and services that help its constituents generate
the highest possible return on their advertising investments.
...
The aQuantive acquisition enables Microsoft to strengthen relationships with advertisers,
agencies and publishers by enhancing the Company’s world-class advertising platforms
and services beyond its current capabilities to serve MSN. The acquisition also provides
Microsoft increased depth in building and supporting next generation advertising solutions
and environments such as cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV.
...
aQuantive, which has approximately 2600 employees, will continue to operate from its
Seattle headquarters as part of Microsoft’s Online Services Business. The combination
of Microsoft and aQuantive takes the Company’s advertising platform to the next level
in its ability to serve Microsoft’s first party audience assets like MSN, Windows
Live, Xbox Live, and Office Live, as well as for third party publishers and applications
such as Facebook and Activision game titles.

The first thing I thought when I heard this news is that it is quite telling that Microsoft's
biggest acquisition ever is for a Web advertising company. The second is that
it seems that Google's overpaying for market share disease ($3.1 billion for DoubleClick
and $1.65 billion for YouTube) is contagious. And finally, Microsoft now has offices
in downtown Seattle. Oh. Yeah. :)

I worked with some of the Avenue A/Razorfish folks as part of the Social
Networking feature in Windows Live Spaces. They seemed like good folks. I'm glad
Microsoft has decided to open the pocketbook instead of just rolling over when it
comes to buy versus build. Sometimes you really just have to suck it up and buy.

Microsoft Acquires aQuantive for $6 Billionhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f57.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/05/18/MicrosoftAcquiresAQuantiveFor6Billion.aspx
Fri, 18 May 2007 15:28:29 GMT<p>
From the Microsoft press release entitled <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/may07/05-18Advertising.mspx">Microsoft
to Acquire aQuantive, Inc</a> we learn
</p>
<blockquote><i><b>REDMOND, Wash. — May 18, 2007 — </b>Microsoft Corp. today announced
it will acquire aQuantive, Inc., for $66.50 per share in an all-cash transaction valued
at approximately $6 billion. This deal expands upon the Company’s previously outlined
vision to provide the advertising industry with a world class, Internet-wide advertising
platform, as well as a set of tools and services that help its constituents generate
the highest possible return on their advertising investments.<br>
...<br>
The aQuantive acquisition enables Microsoft to strengthen relationships with advertisers,
agencies and publishers by enhancing the Company’s world-class advertising platforms
and services beyond its current capabilities to serve MSN. The acquisition also provides
Microsoft increased depth in building and supporting next generation advertising solutions
and environments such as cross media planning, video-on-demand and IPTV.<br>
...<br>
aQuantive, which has approximately 2600 employees, will continue to operate from its
Seattle headquarters as part of Microsoft’s Online Services Business. The combination
of Microsoft and aQuantive takes the Company’s advertising platform to the next level
in its ability to serve Microsoft’s first party audience assets like MSN, Windows
Live, Xbox Live, and Office Live, as well as for third party publishers and applications
such as Facebook and Activision game titles.</i>
<br>
</blockquote>
<p>
The first thing I thought when I heard this news is that it is quite telling that <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=450">Microsoft's
biggest acquisition ever</a> is for a Web advertising company. The second is that
it seems that Google's overpaying for market share disease ($3.1 billion for DoubleClick
and $1.65 billion for YouTube) is contagious. And finally, Microsoft now has offices
in downtown Seattle. Oh. Yeah. :)
</p>
<p>
I worked with some of the Avenue A/Razorfish folks as part of the <a href="http://carnage4life.spaces.live.com/friends/">Social
Networking feature in Windows Live Spaces</a>. They seemed like good folks. I'm glad
Microsoft has decided to open the pocketbook instead of just rolling over when it
comes to buy versus build. Sometimes you really just have to suck it up and buy.
</p>
<p>
Excerpts from the conference call at <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/18/microsoft-pays-6-billion-for-aquantive/">TechCrunch</a>.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f57" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,939a24a9-40e2-4a95-86a8-fd8ffea50f57.aspxCompetitors/Web CompaniesLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf7013http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf7013.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf7013.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf701310

Microsoft ignited hostility following its assertion in Fortune
magazine on Monday that Linux and other open-source software infringe
on 235 of the company's patents.
... In an exclusive interview, Bill Hilf, general manager of platform strategy and
director of Microsoft's work with open-source projects, spoke with IDG News Service
on the effects of the declaration on the open-source community.

IDG News Service: The Fortune story has caused a lot of concern over how
Microsoft may proceed in regard to its patent claims. Did you know Microsoft officials
were going to reveal the number of patents?

Hilf: We did. [But] the Fortune article does not correctly represent our strategy.
That's what has people so inflamed. It looks like our strategy changed and we are
moving in a new direction, but it hasn't. In the Novell deal, we said we had to figure
out a way to solve these IP issues and we needed to figure out a way for better interoperability
with open-source products. The Fortune article makes it look like we are going out
on this litigation path.

Our strategy from everyone in the company -- from [Steve] Ballmer to Brad Smith
to me and everyone in between -- has always been to license and not litigate as it
relates to our intellectual property. So we have no plans to litigate. You can never
say we'll never do anything in the future, but that's not our strategy. That article
spins it on the attack. The only new piece information in that article is that it
just put a number on the patents.

Your thoughts?

Microsoft's Open Source Patent Claims: Interview with Bill Hilfhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf7013.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/05/17/MicrosoftsOpenSourcePatentClaimsInterviewWithBillHilf.aspx
Thu, 17 May 2007 18:15:07 GMT<p>
From the InfoWorld Article <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/17/microsoft-wont-sue-over-Linux_1.html">Hilf:
Microsoft won't sue over Linux, for now</a> we learn
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>Microsoft ignited hostility following its assertion in <a href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/index.htm">Fortune
magazine</a> on Monday that Linux and other open-source software&nbsp;<a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/05/14/microsoft-demands-royalties_1.html">infringe
on 235 of the company's patents</a>.</i>
<br>
...<br>
<i> In an exclusive interview, Bill Hilf, general manager of platform strategy and
director of Microsoft's work with open-source projects, spoke with IDG News Service
on the effects of the declaration on the open-source community.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i><strong>IDG News Service: The Fortune story has caused a lot of concern over how
Microsoft may proceed in regard to its patent claims. Did you know Microsoft officials
were going to reveal the number of patents?</strong></i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Hilf: We did. [But] the Fortune article does not correctly represent our strategy.
That's what has people so inflamed. It looks like our strategy changed and we are
moving in a new direction, but it hasn't. In the Novell deal, we said we had to figure
out a way to solve these IP issues and we needed to figure out a way for better interoperability
with open-source products. The Fortune article makes it look like we are going out
on this litigation path.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Our strategy from everyone in the company -- from [Steve] Ballmer to Brad Smith
to me and everyone in between -- has always been to license and not litigate as it
relates to our intellectual property. So we have no plans to litigate. You can never
say we'll never do anything in the future, but that's not our strategy. That article
spins it on the attack. The only new piece information in that article is that it
just put a number on the patents.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Your thoughts?
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf7013" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b138b247-522d-409e-a9e3-be2daabf7013.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d42http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d42.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d42.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d421

By now most people interested in technology news have heard the story initially reported
by the New York Post in the article Bill's
Hard Drive which claimed that Microsoft was planning to purchase Yahoo! and the
subsequent rebuttal of this news in the Wall Street Journal's article Microsoft,
Yahoo Discussed Deal. Since I work at Microsoft I'm not supposed to comment on
rumors like this so I'll just point to a couple of opinions.

But there is one major reason why I don’t think Microsoft executives
have the stomach for any sort of brand rationalization -- the continued dual branding
of Windows Live and MSN. Each time I have a conversation with Microsoft about Windows
Live, I get a different explanation of what it is and how it fits with MSN. If the
company can’t event figure out its branding strategy with existing properties, I don’t
hold out much faith that they could do so with a premium brand like Yahoo!

I’ll tell ya one thing, though. It sure made for interesting conversation
with a Yahoo employee I met tonight. We were starting to draw up where value would
be built and where it’d be destroyed. There were a lot of places it would be destroyed
and if two guys drinking beer can figure that out in half an hour, I’m sure that caused
smarter people than us to put on the brakes. For instance one of Yahoo’s biggest properties
is its email service. But that’s one of Microsoft’s biggest properties too (aka Hotmail).
Then you look at finance sites. Microsoft is doing pretty well there with Microsoft
Money (I met an employee who works there too and he said both Microsoft and Yahoo
are way ahead of Google in finance traffic). Then you look at mapping. Again, they
are pretty strong competitors there. Search? Who’s search technology would be thrown
away? Advertising technology? Both Microsoft and Yahoo are pretty close there. Flickr?
Clear value creation in an acquisition cause Microsoft doesn’t have anything like
it. Same with Del.icio.us, Upcoming.org, Yahoo Answers, MyBlogLog. Portal? Yahoo is
clear winner in brand name, but that’s just cause Microsoft has done an awful job
in rebranding everything as “Live.”

In related news, Mike Arrington reported yesterday that Yahoo
To Shut Down Yahoo Photos In Favor Of Flickr. This is a shockingly disruptive
move that will definitely piss off users given how different the features and target
audience of both sites are. Why would a Web savvy, user-centric company like Yahoo!
do something that will so obviously cause bad blood between them and their users?
How about all the employees working on Yahoo! Photos who
busted their butts to make it one of the Web's
most popular photo sites? The answer is simple. Yahoo! has redundant and competing
products which they could no longer rationalize.

Now go back and reread Robert Scoble's post linked above then consider what a YHOO-MSFT
merger would look like again.

Some Thoughts on Recent Yahoo! Newshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d42.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/05/05/SomeThoughtsOnRecentYahooNews.aspx
Sat, 05 May 2007 13:55:48 GMT<p>
By now most people interested in technology news have heard the story initially reported
by the New York Post in the article <a href="http://www.nypost.com/seven/05042007/business/bills_hard_drive_business_peter_lauria_and_zachery_kouwe.htm">Bill's
Hard Drive</a> which claimed that Microsoft was planning to purchase Yahoo! and the
subsequent rebuttal of this news in the Wall Street Journal's article <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117827827757492168.html">Microsoft,
Yahoo Discussed Deal</a>. Since I work at Microsoft I'm not supposed to comment on
rumors like this so I'll just point to a couple of opinions.
</p>
<p>
Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, wrote in her blog post entitled <a href="http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/05/why_microsoft_y.html">Why
Microsoft + Yahoo! makes sense – and why it won’t work</a> that
</p>
<blockquote><i> But there is one major reason why I don’t think Microsoft executives
have the stomach for any sort of brand rationalization -- the continued dual branding
of Windows Live and MSN. Each time I have a conversation with Microsoft about Windows
Live, I get a different explanation of what it is and how it fits with MSN. If the
company can’t event figure out its branding strategy with existing properties, I don’t
hold out much faith that they could do so with a premium brand like Yahoo!</i> </blockquote>
<p>
Robert Scoble writes in his post <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2007/05/04/no-microhoo/">No
“Microhoo”</a>
</p>
<blockquote><i> I’ll tell ya one thing, though. It sure made for interesting conversation
with a Yahoo employee I met tonight. We were starting to draw up where value would
be built and where it’d be destroyed. There were a lot of places it would be destroyed
and if two guys drinking beer can figure that out in half an hour, I’m sure that caused
smarter people than us to put on the brakes. For instance one of Yahoo’s biggest properties
is its email service. But that’s one of Microsoft’s biggest properties too (aka Hotmail).
Then you look at finance sites. Microsoft is doing pretty well there with Microsoft
Money (I met an employee who works there too and he said both Microsoft and Yahoo
are way ahead of Google in finance traffic). Then you look at mapping. Again, they
are pretty strong competitors there. Search? Who’s search technology would be thrown
away? Advertising technology? Both Microsoft and Yahoo are pretty close there. Flickr?
Clear value creation in an acquisition cause Microsoft doesn’t have anything like
it. Same with Del.icio.us, Upcoming.org, Yahoo Answers, MyBlogLog. Portal? Yahoo is
clear winner in brand name, but that’s just cause Microsoft has done an awful job
in rebranding everything as “Live.”</i> </blockquote>
<p>
</p>
<p>
As for me, two phrases popped into my head when I heard the rumor; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass">hail
mary play</a> and <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=merger+layoffs">post merger
layoffs</a>. I guess <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_association#Psychology">word
association</a> is mother...
</p>
<p>
In related news, Mike Arrington reported yesterday that <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/05/03/breaking-yahoo-to-announce-closure-of-yahoo-photos-tomorrow/">Yahoo
To Shut Down Yahoo Photos In Favor Of Flickr</a>. This is a shockingly disruptive
move that will definitely piss off users given how different the features and target
audience of both sites are. Why would a Web savvy, user-centric company like Yahoo!
do something that will so obviously cause bad blood between them and their users?
How about all the employees working on <a href="http://photos.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Photos</a> who
busted their butts to make it one of the <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/flickryahoocomscore.png">Web's
most popular photo sites</a>? The answer is simple. Yahoo! has redundant and competing
products which they could no longer rationalize.
<br>
</p>
<p>
Now go back and reread Robert Scoble's post linked above then consider what a YHOO-MSFT
merger would look like again.&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d42" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,1b660728-d950-4f9f-a2f3-e2f155b22d42.aspxCompetitors/Web CompaniesLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b40http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b40.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b40.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b404

This post was originally meant to be a response to Mini-Microsoft's blog post entitled Mini,
a Devil, and Fine Whine where he seems to imply that there is some sort of class
struggle going on at Microsoft and also made some calls for radical transparency.
However this morning Mini linked
to a blog post entitled For
want of a shoe, or time for a new rider? on the MSFTextrememakeover blog which
is just fire and has distracted me. If you're a Microsoft watcher [or even better
a Microsoft exec] you should go ahead and read it, twice even. Key excerpts that lit
my fire

Mission

MSFT does not appear to have a clear, honestly customer-focused mission that is
understood at all levels. Importantly - and perhaps as a result - employees seemingly
aren't in total accord or fully bought into it. If MSFT truly believes in "Your
potential. Our passion", then it needs to do more than just pay lip-service
to it. It needs to open itself to all that that entails (cross-platform support, not
playing lock-in games, etc.) and deliver against it.
...Culture

I see two concerns here. First, the need to move from a culture of "good enough"
to one of "excellence" and "insanely great". I've posted about this before. MSFT has
a long-standing approach, ingrained via Gates, of getting something - anything - out
to market and then fixing it over time. That worked well for a long time when "free"
alternatives weren't prevalent, and when competitors/markets weren't moving as quickly
as they are today. Now, it's a lot less successful, and yet MSFT continues to do it
and be surprised when it fails.
...Prioritize/Focus

Stop fighting major wars on multiple fronts simultaneously. It is simply ridiculous
for current management to assume that MSFT can fight the biggest and best companies
on earth, across a dozen or more battlegrounds, and still hope to prevail. Just take
a look at some of the folks MSFT is going up against: SONY (and Nintendo) in
gaming, Nokia and many others in mobile, GOOG and YHOO in Search, Everyone from
Alcatel to Siemens in IPTV, IBM/Oracle/SAP (and smaller players Salesforce.com. Rightnow,
etc.) in ERP and CRM, IBM/Adobe/FOSS in middleware and development, AAPL and most
of MSFT's former partners in mobile media, AAPL and GNU/Linux in Operating Systems,
and FOSS in personal productivity. Worse, these battles are spreading MSFT too thin,
and leaving its core cash cows increasingly vulnerable (would Vista have taken 5 years
to develop if management hadn't been distracted with a dozen other battles?).
...Public Face

I am sick and tired of MSFT executives "trash" talking competitors in public. This
is such a fundamental business tenet that it's an embarrassment to have to even list
it.

Like I said, the entire post is really good. As for my response to Mini's Mini,
a Devil, and Fine Whine post, here it goes. The kind of people who focus on what
the top X% of Microsoft are making are probably not the kind of employees you want
to keep around anyway so it seems weird to be catering to them. The concerns that
the Microsoft employees whose opinions I value have are all eloquently described
in MSFTextrememakeover's post excerpted above. The kind of people who get in a tizzy
because some VPs got to attend an expensive award ceremony that they didn't are the
kind of whiners and losers you can never make happy so why bother? It's not like they
can argue that they are underpaid or that their employment benefits suck. Instead
I see it as part of the
age of entitlement in America where lots of people believe they deserve to
be balling out of control and then gets pissed off when they aren't. The best thing
you can do with those kind of people is to show them the door.

How Do We Fix Microsoft?http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b40.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/03/28/HowDoWeFixMicrosoft.aspx
Wed, 28 Mar 2007 14:34:15 GMT<p>
This post was originally meant to be a response to Mini-Microsoft's blog post entitled <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/03/mini-devil-and-fine-whine.html">Mini,
a Devil, and Fine Whine</a> where he seems to imply that there is some sort of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_struggle">class
struggle</a> going on at Microsoft and also made some calls for radical transparency.
However this morning Mini <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/03/extreme-results.html">linked
to</a> a blog post entitled <a href="http://msftextrememakeover.blogspot.com/2007/03/for-want-of-shoe-or-time-for-new-rider.html"> For
want of a shoe, or time for a new rider?</a> on the MSFTextrememakeover blog which
is just fire and has distracted me. If you're a Microsoft watcher [or even better
a Microsoft exec] you should go ahead and read it, twice even. Key excerpts that lit
my fire
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i><strong>Mission</strong></i>
</p>
<i>MSFT does not appear to have a clear, honestly customer-focused mission that is
understood at all levels. Importantly - and perhaps as a result - employees seemingly
aren't in total accord or fully bought into it. If MSFT truly believes in "<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);">Your
potential. Our passion</span>", then it needs to do more than just pay lip-service
to it. It needs to open itself to all that that entails (cross-platform support, not
playing lock-in games, etc.) and deliver against it.
<br>
...<br>
</i><i><strong>Culture</strong></i>
<p>
</p>
<i>I see two concerns here. First, the need to move from a culture of "good enough"
to one of "excellence" and "insanely great". I've posted about this before. MSFT has
a long-standing approach, ingrained via Gates, of getting something - anything - out
to market and then fixing it over time. That worked well for a long time when "free"
alternatives weren't prevalent, and when competitors/markets weren't moving as quickly
as they are today. Now, it's a lot less successful, and yet MSFT continues to do it
and be surprised when it fails.<br>
...<br>
</i><i><strong>Prioritize/Focus</strong></i>
<p>
</p>
<i>Stop fighting major wars on multiple fronts simultaneously. It is simply ridiculous
for current management to assume that MSFT can fight the biggest and best companies
on earth, across a dozen or more battlegrounds, and still hope to prevail. Just take
a look at <u>some</u> of the folks MSFT is going up against: SONY (and Nintendo) in
gaming, Nokia and many others in mobile, GOOG and YHOO in Search, <a href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39286384,00.htm?r=5">Everyone</a> from
Alcatel to Siemens in IPTV, IBM/Oracle/SAP (and smaller players Salesforce.com. Rightnow,
etc.) in ERP and CRM, IBM/Adobe/FOSS in middleware and development, AAPL and most
of MSFT's former partners in mobile media, AAPL and GNU/Linux in Operating Systems,
and FOSS in personal productivity. Worse, these battles are spreading MSFT too thin,
and leaving its core cash cows increasingly vulnerable (would Vista have taken 5 years
to develop if management hadn't been distracted with a dozen other battles?).<br>
...<br>
</i><i><strong>Public Face</strong></i>
<p>
</p>
<i>I am sick and tired of MSFT executives "trash" talking competitors in public. This
is such a fundamental business tenet that it's an embarrassment to have to even list
it.</i> </blockquote>
<p>
Like I said, the entire post is really good. As for my response to Mini's <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/03/mini-devil-and-fine-whine.html">Mini,
a Devil, and Fine Whine</a> post, here it goes. The kind of people who focus on what
the top X% of Microsoft are making are probably not the kind of employees you want
to keep around anyway so it seems weird to be catering to them. The concerns that
the Microsoft employees <b>whose opinions I value</b> have are all eloquently described
in MSFTextrememakeover's post excerpted above. The kind of people who get in a tizzy
because some VPs got to attend an expensive award ceremony that they didn't are the
kind of whiners and losers you can never make happy so why bother? It's not like they
can argue that they are underpaid or that their employment benefits suck.&nbsp;Instead
I see it as part of <a href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/308772_faith24.html">the
age of entitlement in America</a> where lots of people believe they <b>deserve </b>to
be balling out of control and then gets pissed off when they aren't. The best thing
you can do with those kind of people is to show them the door.&nbsp;
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b40" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,86d8bbc0-9720-4bf2-a214-904e75cc3b40.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=9b8b0745-28a6-4a62-9567-1d668f9ab7cehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,9b8b0745-28a6-4a62-9567-1d668f9ab7ce.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,9b8b0745-28a6-4a62-9567-1d668f9ab7ce.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=9b8b0745-28a6-4a62-9567-1d668f9ab7ce

Microsoft Wednesday named Satya Nadella to lead the newly formed Search and
Ad Platform group, the software giant's effort to optimize the advertising revenue-raising
potential of its search business.

Nadella, previously corporate vice president for Microsoft's Business Solutions
group, will report to Kevin Johnson, president of the Platform and Services Division,
the company said in a statement.

I'm not sure this information is accurate since I haven't seen any sign of it on Microsoft
Presspass nor has Satya
Nadella's corporate profile been updated. However if it is, it would then create
three VPs under Kevin
Johnson who are in charge of Microsoft's three Web brands; Windows Live, MSN,
and Live Search. The org chart representing all the folks who are in charge of Microsoft's
online businesses would then be

if the Infoworld article is accurate.

The only relevance this has to people who read my blog is that it gives a nice visual
of where I fit in the org chart. I'm in Blake Irving's group, working on aspects of
the Windows Live Platform that powers services used by the Windows Live Experience
group.

The Org Chart for Microsoft's Online Businesseshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,9b8b0745-28a6-4a62-9567-1d668f9ab7ce.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/03/22/TheOrgChartForMicrosoftsOnlineBusinesses.aspx
Thu, 22 Mar 2007 18:55:15 GMT<p>
According to the Infoworld article entitled <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/03/21/HNleadersformssearchadunit_1.html" title="Microsoft names leaders for search-and-ad unit">Microsoft
names leaders for search-and-ad unit</a>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>Microsoft&nbsp;Wednesday named Satya Nadella to lead the newly formed Search and
Ad Platform group, the software giant's effort to optimize the advertising revenue-raising
potential of its search business.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Nadella, previously corporate vice president for Microsoft's Business Solutions
group, will report to Kevin Johnson, president of the Platform and Services Division,
the company said in a statement.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I'm not sure this information is accurate since I haven't seen any sign of it on <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/">Microsoft
Presspass</a> nor has <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/nadella/">Satya
Nadella's corporate profile</a> been updated. However if it is, it would then create
three VPs under <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/kjohnson/">Kevin
Johnson</a> who are in charge of Microsoft's three Web brands; Windows Live, MSN,
and Live Search. The org chart representing all the folks who are in charge of Microsoft's
online businesses would then be&nbsp;
</p>
<img src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/content/binary/orgchart.jpg" border="0">
<p>
if the Infoworld article is accurate.
<br>
</p>
<p>
The only relevance this has to people who read my blog is that it gives a nice visual
of where I fit in the org chart. I'm in Blake Irving's group, working on aspects of
the Windows Live Platform that powers services used by the Windows Live Experience
group.&nbsp;
</p>
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This is a difficult post to write. But after much of thought, I have decided
not to remain with Microsoft and I am returning to JupiterResearch as of Monday 3/12.

At my core, I am an analyst. It’s what I do and I do it well and after much thought,
I realize I’m just not ready to stop doing that job just yet. I believe Jupiter itself
is poised for some amazing things in the future and I’ve invested too much in the
company to feel good about walking away at this point. Therefore I have decided
to return and I am pleased that I have beenwelcomed
back. My thanks to everyone I have worked with at Microsoft.

Wow, that was quick.

Michael Gartenberg Leaving Microsofthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,8a12e49b-761c-47c7-a107-377b2cecb3a4.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/03/07/MichaelGartenbergLeavingMicrosoft.aspx
Wed, 07 Mar 2007 21:15:44 GMT<p>
It seems just like yesterday when the tech blogosphere was abuzz with news that <a href="http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/2007/02/all_good_things.html">analyst
Michael Gartenberg was leaving Jupiter Research for Microsoft</a>. So you can imagine
my surprise to fire up his blog today to find the post <a href="http://gartenblog.net/2007/03/07/and-back-to-analyst/">And
Back to Analyst…</a> where he writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>This is a difficult post to write. But after&nbsp; much of thought, I have decided
not to remain with Microsoft and I am returning to JupiterResearch as of Monday 3/12. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i>At my core, I am an analyst. It’s what I do and I do it well and after much thought,
I realize I’m just not ready to stop doing that job just yet. I believe Jupiter itself
is poised for some amazing things in the future and I’ve invested too much in the
company to feel good about walking away at this point. Therefore I have&nbsp;decided
to return and I am pleased that I have been<u> </u><a href="http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/schatsky/archives/007919.html"><u>welcomed
back</u></a>. My thanks to everyone I have worked with at Microsoft.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
Wow, that was quick.
<br>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=8a12e49b-761c-47c7-a107-377b2cecb3a4" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,8a12e49b-761c-47c7-a107-377b2cecb3a4.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d645http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d645.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d645.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d6454

I'm almost caught up on my blog reading since getting back from vacation and I've
spotted a couple of items I'd have blogged responses to if I was around. Since I don't
have the time to write full blog posts on each of these items, here are links to the
posts and brief outlines on what I thought about them

The way he does that is to measure entropy (yup that same old
same old Claude Shannon’s information theory which you learned in one of the CS courses)
of entities like documents (D), users (U) and tags (T). His research group crawled
the entire del.icio.us archive and then calculated the entropies. Here’s what they
found:

• H(D|T) specifies the social navigation efficiency. How efficient is it for us
to specify a set of tags to find a set of specific documents? We found that
in del.icio.us that it is getting less and less efficient.

This makes sense when you think about it. Let's say the first set of
users of del.icio.us came from a homogenous software
development background and started applying the tag "xml" to mean items about the
eXtensible Markup Language. Later on as the community grew, a number of gamers joined
the site and they now use the tag "xml" to refer to items about the game X-Men
Legends. Now if you are one of the original geek users of the site, the URL http://del.icio.us/tag/xml no
longer is just about markup languages but also about video games. To actually find
items strictly about the eXtensible Markup Language you may have to add other tags
as refinements such as http://del.icio.us/tag/xml+programming.

What this means is that to the oldest users of the site, the quality of the tagging
system will seem to degrade over time even though this is a natural consequence of
growth and diversifying its user base. Of course, this is only a problem if a lot
of people use del.icio.us to find all items about
a topic (i.e. browsing by tags) as opposed to just storing their individual bookmarks
or subscribing to the bookmarks of people they know and trust.

It seems Google announced some sort of Microsoft Office killer last week. You can
read Don Dodge's Why
Microsoft will not fall into the Innovators Dilemma and Robert Scoble's Microsoft
has no innovator’s dillema? for two conflicting opinions on how this affects Microsoft.
Personally, I think I've overdosed on the amount of times I've read the words innovator's
dilemma in association with this announcement while catching up on email and blogs.
What is funny about this situation is that almost everyone I've seen who throws the
term around doesn't seem to have read
the book. It is quite interesting to see Don Dodge write sentences like

Microsoft will do everything possible to preserve these businesses while
transitioning to the new Live strategy.

and then follow that up with
"No Innovators Dilemma here" without seeing the obvious contradiction in his words.
Lots of doublethink at
work it seems.

A side effect of reading this set of blog posts is that I found Don Dodge's Innovate
or Imitate...Fame or Fortune? which praises being a fast follower as being more
valuable than being an innovator. I've found that a lot of people at Microsoft point
to past and recent successes such as XBox, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer
as proof that being a "fast follower" is the best strategy for Microsoft. There are
three key problems with this kind of thinking

It assumes your competitors are incompetent. This may have worked in the old days
but with competitors like Google and Apple Inc, it isn't the case anymore.

It requires that you have an ace up your sleeve that significantly one ups the competitors
when you ship your knock off (e.g. integrating disparate applications into an Office
Suite and pricing it lower than competitors, integrating product into the operating
system, integrating a rich and social online experience into what was previously a
solitary experience etc).

It ignores the fact that "first mover advantage" is actually true for applications
that have network effects which
is definitely the case for social software which a lot of software has become today.

Why is it that gender (and less often race, nay, skin-color, see below) are the
only physical characteristics that lots of otherwise smart people appear to chime
in support for diversity of?

E.g. as long as we are trying for greater diversity in superficial physical characteristics
(superficial because what do such characteristics have to do with the stated directly
relevant criteria of "technical expertise, speaking skills, professional stature,
brand appropriateness, and marketability" - though perhaps I can see a tenuous link
with "rainbow" marketing), why not ask about other such characteristics?

Where are all the green-eyed folks?

Where are all the folks with facial tattoos?

Where are all the redheads?

Where are the speakers with non-ear facial piercings?

Surely such speakers would help with "hipness" marketing.

I found this post to be disingenious and wondered how anybody could downplay the gender
and racial bias in the "Web 2.0" technology conference scene by equating it to a preference
for green eyed speakers. So I decided to throw in my $0.02 on this topic...again.

After the last ETech, I realized I was seeing the same faces and hearing the same
things over and over again. More importantly, I noticed that the demographics of the
speaker lists for these conferences don't match the software industry as a whole let
alone the users who we are supposed to be building the software for.

There were lots of little bits of ignorance by the speakers and audience which added
up in a way that rubbed me wrong. For example, at the 2005 Web
2.0 conference a lot of people were ignorant of Skype except as 'that startup
that got a bunch of money from eBay'. Given that there are a significant amount of
foreigners in the U.S. software industry who use Skype to keep in touch with folks
back home, it was surprising to see so much ignorance about it at a supposedly leading
edge technology conference. The same thing goes for how suprised people were by how
teenagers used the Web and computers. Additionally, there are just as many women
using social software such as photo sharing, instant messaging, social networking,
etc as men yet you rarely see their perspectives presented at any of these conferences.

When I think of diversity, I expect diversity of perspectives. People's perspectives
are often shaped by their background and experiences. When you have a conference about
an industry which is filled with people of diverse backgrounds building software for
people of diverse backgrounds, it is a disservice to have the conversation and perspectives
be homogenous. The software industry isn't just young white males in their mid-20s
to mid-30s nor is that the primary demographic of Web users.

Personally, I've gotten tired of attending conferences where we heard more about technologies
and sites that the homogenous demographic of young to middle aged, white, male computer
geeks find interesting (e.g. del.icio.us and tagging)
and less about what Web users actually use regularly or find interesting (hint: it
isn't del.icio.us and it sure as fuck isn't
tagging).

Entropy in Tagging Systems, Google's Office Killer and Conference Diversityhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d645.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/02/26/EntropyInTaggingSystemsGooglesOfficeKillerAndConferenceDiversity.aspx
Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:09:09 GMT<p>
I'm almost caught up on my blog reading since getting back from vacation and I've
spotted a couple of items I'd have blogged responses to if I was around. Since I don't
have the time to write full blog posts on each of these items, here are links to the
posts and brief outlines on what I thought about them
</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>
Harish Mallipeddi has a blog post entitled <a href="http://poundbang.in/2007/02/24/measuring-efficiency-of-tagging-with-entropy/">Measuring
efficiency of tagging with Entropy</a> links to the paper <a href="http://www.viktoria.se/altchi/submissions/submission_edchi_0.pdf">Understanding
Navigability of Social Tagging Systems</a> by Ed Chi and Todd Mytkowicz of Xerox Parc
which excerpts the key findings from the paper. One result of their research which
seems obvious in hindsight and shows one of the issues that social software has to
deal with as its community of users grows was
</p>
<blockquote><i>The way he does that is to&nbsp;measure entropy (yup that same old
same old Claude Shannon’s information theory which you learned in one of the CS courses)
of entities like documents (D), users (U)&nbsp;and tags (T). His research group crawled
the entire del.icio.us archive and then calculated the entropies. Here’s what they
found:</i>
<p>
<i>• H(D|T) specifies the social navigation efficiency. How efficient is it for us
to specify a set of tags to find a set of specific documents? <strong>We found that
in del.icio.us that it is getting less and less efficient</strong>.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>This makes sense when you think about it. Let's say the first set of
users of <a href="http://del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a> came from a homogenous software
development background and started applying the tag "xml" to mean items about the
eXtensible Markup Language. Later on as the community grew, a number of gamers joined
the site and they now use the tag "xml" to refer to items about the game&nbsp;<a href="http://xmenlegends.com/">X-Men
Legends</a>. Now if you are one of the original geek users of the site, the URL <a href="http://del.icio.us/tag/xml">http://del.icio.us/tag/xml</a> no
longer is just about markup languages but also about video games. To actually find
items strictly about the eXtensible Markup Language you may have to add other tags
as refinements such as <a href="http://del.icio.us/tag/xml+programming">http://del.icio.us/tag/xml+programming</a>.
<p>
What this means is that to the oldest users of the site, the quality of the tagging
system will seem to degrade over time even though this is a natural consequence of
growth and diversifying its user base. Of course, this is only a problem if a lot
of people use <a href="http://del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a> to find all items about
a topic (i.e. browsing by tags) as opposed to just storing their individual bookmarks
or subscribing to the bookmarks of people they know and trust.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
It seems Google announced some sort of Microsoft Office killer last week. You can
read Don Dodge's <a href="http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/02/why_microsoft_w.html">Why
Microsoft will not fall into the Innovators Dilemma</a> and Robert Scoble's <a href="http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/23/microsoft-has-no-innovators-dillema/">Microsoft
has no innovator’s dillema?</a> for two conflicting opinions on how this affects Microsoft.
Personally, I think I've overdosed on the amount of times I've read the words <i>innovator's
dilemma</i> in association with this announcement while catching up on email and blogs.
What is funny about this situation is that almost everyone I've seen who throws the
term around doesn't seem to have <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/christensen.htm">read
the book</a>. It is quite interesting to see Don Dodge write sentences like
</p>
<blockquote> Microsoft will do everything possible to <b>preserve these businesses</b> while
transitioning to the new Live strategy. </blockquote> and then follow that up with
"No Innovators Dilemma here" without seeing the obvious contradiction in his words.
Lots of&nbsp; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink">doublethink</a> at
work it seems.
<p>
A side effect of reading this set of blog posts is that I found Don Dodge's <a href="http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2005/10/innovate_or_imi.html">Innovate
or Imitate...Fame or Fortune?</a> which praises being a fast follower as being more
valuable than being an innovator. I've found that a lot of people at Microsoft point
to past and recent successes such as XBox, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer
as proof that being a "fast follower" is the best strategy for Microsoft. There are
three key problems with this kind of thinking
</p>
<ol>
<li>
It assumes your competitors are incompetent. This may have worked in the old days
but with competitors like Google and Apple Inc, it isn't the case anymore.
</li>
<li>
It requires that you have an ace up your sleeve that significantly one ups the competitors
when you ship your knock off (e.g. integrating disparate applications into an Office
Suite and pricing it lower than competitors, integrating product into the operating
system, integrating a rich and social online experience into what was previously a
solitary experience etc).
</li>
<li>
It ignores the fact that "first mover advantage" is actually true for applications
that have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect">network effects</a> which
is definitely the case for social software which a lot of software has become today.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
The "diversity in conferences" recurring debate was kicked off again by a blog post
by Jason Kottke entitled <a href="http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences">Gender
Diversity at Web Conferences</a> which encouraged the interesting responses from folks
like <a href="http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/02/23/diverse-it-gets/">Eric
Meyer</a>, <a href="http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/02/23/the_old_boys_cl">Anil Dash</a> and <a href="http://burningbird.net/diversity/progress/">Shelley
Powers</a>. They are all good posts with stuff I agree and disagree with in them but
I wasn't moved to write until I read the post <a href="http://tantek.com/log/2007/02.html#yrsmartpeepsblind">Why
are smart people still stuck on gender and skin-color blinders?</a> by Tantek Çelik
where he wrote
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i> Why is it that gender (and less often race, nay, skin-color, see below) are the
only physical characteristics that lots of otherwise smart people appear to chime
in support for diversity of? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i>E.g. as long as we are trying for greater diversity in superficial physical characteristics
(superficial because what do such characteristics have to do with the stated directly
relevant criteria of "technical expertise, speaking skills, professional stature,
brand appropriateness, and marketability" - though perhaps I can see a tenuous link
with "rainbow" marketing), why not ask about other such characteristics? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> Where are all the green-eyed folks? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> Where are all the folks with facial tattoos? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> Where are all the redheads? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> Where are the speakers with non-ear facial piercings? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> Surely such speakers would help with "hipness" marketing.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I found this post to be disingenious and wondered how anybody could downplay the gender
and racial bias in the "Web 2.0" technology conference scene by equating it to a preference
for green eyed speakers. So I decided to throw in my $0.02 on this topic...<a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=b237f54d-1a9f-4d9e-958f-ee567d278de7">again</a>.
</p>
<p>
After the last ETech, I realized I was seeing the same faces and hearing the same
things over and over again. More importantly, I noticed that the demographics of the
speaker lists for these conferences don't match the software industry as a whole let
alone the users who we are supposed to be building the software for.
</p>
<p>
There were lots of little bits of ignorance by the speakers and audience which added
up in a way that rubbed me wrong. For example, at the 2005&nbsp; <a href="http://web2con.com/">Web
2.0 conference</a> a lot of people were ignorant of Skype except as 'that startup
that got a bunch of money from eBay'. Given that there are a significant amount of
foreigners in the U.S. software industry who use Skype to keep in touch with folks
back home, it was surprising to see so much ignorance about it at a supposedly leading
edge technology conference. The same thing goes for how suprised people were by <a href="PermaLink.aspx?guid=46395904-3a26-4e62-867f-e5dbaaf2ae7c">how
teenagers used the Web and computers</a>. Additionally, there are just as many women
using social software such as photo sharing, instant messaging, social networking,
etc as men yet you rarely see their perspectives presented at any of these conferences.&nbsp;
</p>
When I think of diversity, I expect diversity of perspectives. People's perspectives
are often shaped by their background and experiences. When you have a conference about
an industry which is filled with people of diverse backgrounds building software for
people of diverse backgrounds, it is a disservice to have the conversation and perspectives
be homogenous.&nbsp;The software industry isn't just young white males in their mid-20s
to mid-30s nor is that the primary demographic of Web users.
<p>
</p>
<p>
Personally, I've gotten tired of attending conferences where we heard more about technologies
and sites that the homogenous demographic of young to middle aged, white, male computer
geeks find interesting (e.g. <a href="http://del.icio.us">del.icio.us</a> and tagging)
and less about what Web users actually use regularly or find interesting (hint: it
isn't <a href="http://del.icio.us/">del.icio.us</a> and it sure <strike>as fuck</strike> isn't
tagging).
</p>
</li>
</ul>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d645" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,1effd2cf-940d-49e7-a476-c0e482f9d645.aspxCompetitors/Web CompaniesLife in the B0rg CubeSocial Softwarehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c661http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c661.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c661.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c6616

Mini-Microsoft has a blog post entitled Where's
Ray? Where's the Vista Campaign? where he claims that Ray
Ozzie has been AWOL when it comes to presenting a vision for Microsoft as it's
Chief Software Architect. There is an interesting comment in response to his post
from an ex-Microsoftie which is excerpted below

>We need more engagement from Ray and his brigade about what's
happening and what kind of coherent vision is coming about.

I'm sorry, but this is NOT what you need. You do NOT need vision from Ray.
At this point, what you need from Ray is code!

I have a very long history with Microsoft, and I am no longer a softie. One of the
reasons I left is the whole vision/strategy vs. code problem. In the old days, production
quality code really mattered a ton. In the new Microsoft, from Forum 2000 onward,
code was much less important. What really mattered was laying down a vision and a
strategy.

I wrote a longish post in response to this comment then realized no good could come
from posting it here. Suffice to say I agree with the sentiment in the comment. Somewhere
along the line VISION became more important than SHIPPING CODE at Microsoft. This
really became a problem when the gap between our vision (or should I say BillG's vision)
and our ability to ship code widened a lot more than we realized leading to unpleasant
results (e.g. Longhorn).

What the company needs now is more focus on shipping code and less focus
on vision. Quite frankly, I'd be quite happy to never get another vision memo
or speech from Ray as long as I'm sure he's out there making sure we aren't working
on any more obviously
bad ideas. One of the reasons I'm still at Microsoft [specifically Windows Live]
is that I believe that our current
leadership believes in shipping code. I've also gotten the same vibe from Ray
which is also goodness in my book. Time will tell whether my confidence is warranted
or not.

PS: Is it me or are there shades of markl in
that comment on Mini's blog? Vision vs. Shipping Codehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c661.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/02/18/VisionVsShippingCode.aspx
Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:39:07 GMT<p>
Mini-Microsoft has a blog post entitled <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2007/02/wheres-ray-wheres-vista-campaign.html"> Where's
Ray? Where's the Vista Campaign?</a> where he claims that <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ozzie">Ray
Ozzie</a> has been AWOL when it comes to presenting a vision for Microsoft as it's
Chief Software Architect. There is an interesting comment in response to his post
from an ex-Microsoftie which is excerpted below
</p>
<blockquote> <i>&gt;We need more engagement from Ray and his brigade about what's
happening and what kind of coherent vision is coming about.<br>
<br>
I'm sorry, but this is NOT what you need. You do NOT need <b>vision</b> from Ray.
At this point, what you need from Ray is <b>code</b>!<br>
<br>
I have a very long history with Microsoft, and I am no longer a softie. One of the
reasons I left is the whole vision/strategy vs. code problem. In the old days, production
quality code really mattered a ton. In the new Microsoft, from Forum 2000 onward,
code was much less important. What really mattered was laying down a vision and a
strategy.</i></blockquote>
<p>
I wrote a longish post in response to this comment then realized no good could come
from posting it here. Suffice to say I agree with the sentiment in the comment. Somewhere
along the line VISION became more important than SHIPPING CODE at Microsoft. This
really became a problem when the gap between our vision (or should I say BillG's vision)
and our ability to ship code widened a lot more than we realized leading to unpleasant
results (e.g. <a href="http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=%22longhorn+reset%22">Longhorn</a>).&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
What the company needs now is <b>more focus on shipping code</b> and <i>less focus
on vision</i>. Quite frankly, I'd be quite happy to never get another vision memo
or speech from Ray as long as I'm sure he's out there making sure we aren't working
on any more <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f27302c4-b898-4cec-9c46-249106ea76c8">obviously
bad ideas</a>. One of the reasons I'm still at Microsoft [specifically Windows Live]
is that I believe that our <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ssinofsky/default.mspx">current
leadership</a> believes in shipping code. I've also gotten the same vibe from Ray
which is also goodness in my book.&nbsp;Time will tell whether my confidence is warranted
or not.
</p>
<b>PS:</b> Is it me or are there shades of <a href="http://mark-lucovsky.blogspot.com/2005/02/shipping-software.html">markl</a> in
that comment on Mini's blog? <img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c661" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,ac44c231-7b31-4a85-850f-893be950c661.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f6http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f6.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f6.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f62

One of the interesting things about Microsoft is that the company is so big that it
is quite possible to be working on similar ideas to other groups in the company without
significantly exchanging information or cross pollinating ideas. Earlier this week,
I was at a cross-divisional information sharing event where I got to see where a lot
of products were going with integrating the ideas from social software trends on the
Web into their products.

Discover who knows what and who knows whom within an organization. Quickly
and easily locate people by subject expertise or social relationships with key contacts
or companies.

Simplify creating automated user profiles for each member of the
network. Knowledge Network automates the discovery and sharing of undocumented
knowledge and relationships for each member in the network. The user-customizable
automated profile is secure and requires member approval before it is shared.

Effectively search and pinpoint individuals. Knowledge Network
provides the ability to connect with internal and external contacts, and calculates
the shortest social distance between any two people in the network.

The problem of discovering people with subject matter expertise is a big one at a
company like Microsoft with over 70,000 employees. How do you track down the best
person to send feedback about Windows Live Spaces or
ask a question about some of the idiosyncracies of C#? Knowledge Network attempts
to address this in two ways. Recently I was on a mail thread where some folks suggested
building a database of employees and annotating it with tags that identified certain
attributes or skills of these employees such as the products they worked on, technologies
they were experts at and so on. People quickly pointed out that asking people to create
a profile of themselves on an internal site then tag themselves is a hassle that few
would undertake. What many people on the mail thread [including myself] didn't realize
is that Knowledge Network is actually targetted at exactly this scenario. To get over
the boot strapping problem, the Knowledge Network client application indexes your
email inbox and extracts two sets of information from it (a) a graph of your professional
relationships based on who you exchange mail with regularly and (b) a set of keywords
that describes subject matter your regularly communicate about. This information can
then be uploaded to your company intranet's "People Search" feature where people can
then search for you by tags keywords and then once they find
you can then ask "Show Me How I Am Connected to this Person" which uses information
gleaned from the org chart and email chains to figure out how your social networks
overlap. This is seriously cool stuff.

Although I had heard of the Knowledge Network product I haven't been deeply familiar
with it which seems really unfortunate given that a lot of the kinds of social networking
features I've been thinking about for Windows Live would benefit from the ideas I've
seen implemented by the Knowledge Network team and Sharepoint. If only there was a
way I can search for and browse people working on "social networking" technologies
at Microsoft so I don't miss information like this in future. :) I wonder if
I can subscribe to an RSS feed of "People Search" results so I can keep track of when
new people that have been tagged as "social networking" enter the system (i.e. join
the company or start working on a new product). I need to investigate or propose this
as a feature if it isn't already there.

Social Software for the Enterprise: Sharepoint's Knowledge Networkhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f6.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/12/09/SocialSoftwareForTheEnterpriseSharepointsKnowledgeNetwork.aspx
Sat, 09 Dec 2006 10:41:23 GMT<p>
One of the interesting things about Microsoft is that the company is so big that it
is quite possible to be working on similar ideas to other groups in the company without
significantly exchanging information or cross pollinating ideas. Earlier this week,
I was at a cross-divisional information sharing event where I got to see where a lot
of products were going with integrating the ideas from social software trends on the
Web into their products.
</p>
<p>
One of the presentations I was most impressed with was the one forthe <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/kn">Knowledge
Network for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007</a>. This is a product that integrates
with enables people at a company to
</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>
<b class="bterm">Discover who knows what and who knows whom within an organization. </b> Quickly
and easily locate people by subject expertise or social relationships with key contacts
or companies.</li>
<li>
<b class="bterm">Simplify creating automated user profiles for each member of the
network. </b> Knowledge Network automates the discovery and sharing of undocumented
knowledge and relationships for each member in the network. The user-customizable
automated profile is secure and requires member approval before it is shared.</li>
<li>
<b class="bterm">Effectively search and pinpoint individuals.</b> Knowledge Network
provides the ability to connect with internal and external contacts, and calculates
the shortest social distance between any two people in the network.
</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>
The problem of discovering people with subject matter expertise is a big one at a
company like Microsoft with over 70,000 employees. How do you track down the best
person to send feedback about <a href="http://spaces.live.com">Windows Live Spaces</a> or
ask a question about some of the idiosyncracies of C#? Knowledge Network attempts
to address this in two ways. Recently I was on a mail thread where some folks suggested
building a database of employees and annotating it with tags that identified certain
attributes or skills of these employees such as the products they worked on, technologies
they were experts at and so on. People quickly pointed out that asking people to create
a profile of themselves on an internal site then tag themselves is a hassle that few
would undertake. What many people on the mail thread [including myself] didn't realize
is that Knowledge Network is actually targetted at exactly this scenario. To get over
the boot strapping problem, the Knowledge Network client application indexes your
email inbox and extracts two sets of information from it (a) a graph of your professional
relationships based on who you exchange mail with regularly and (b) a set of keywords
that describes subject matter your regularly communicate about. This information can
then be uploaded to your company intranet's "People Search" feature where people can
then search for you by&nbsp;<strike>tags</strike> keywords and then once they find
you can then ask "Show Me How I Am Connected to this Person" which uses information
gleaned from the org chart and email chains to figure out how your social networks
overlap. This is seriously cool stuff.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
Although I had heard of the Knowledge Network product I haven't been deeply familiar
with it which seems really unfortunate given that a lot of the kinds of social networking
features I've been thinking about for Windows Live would benefit from the ideas I've
seen implemented by the Knowledge Network team and Sharepoint. If only there was a
way I can search for and browse people working on "social networking" technologies
at Microsoft so I don't miss information like this in future. :)&nbsp; I wonder if
I can subscribe to an RSS feed of "People Search" results so I can keep track of when
new people that have been tagged as "social networking" enter the system (i.e. join
the company or start working on a new product). I need to investigate or propose this
as a feature if it isn't already there.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
By the way, the Knowledge Network folks have a team blog at <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/kn">http://blogs.msdn.com/kn</a> which
has a lot of informative posts about their product such as <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/kn/archive/2006/05/24/605422.aspx">What
is Knowledge Network and Why Should You Care?</a> and <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/kn/archive/2006/08/22/How-KN-Integrates-with-SharePoint.aspx">How
KN Integrates with SharePoint</a>. Definitely add their blog to your news reader if
you are interested in social networking within the enterprise.<br>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f6" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,f7e49ffd-34a7-4965-a3a8-9ccae9c5e8f6.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeSocial Softwarehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e2http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e2.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e2.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e21

A: That's right. My last day at InfoWorld will be Friday Dec 15. On Jan
15, after a month-long sabbatical, I'll become a Microsoft employee. My official title
will be Evangelist, and I'll report to Jeff Sandquist. He's the leader of the team
that creates Channel 9 and Channel 10, websites that feature blogs, videos, screencasts,
and podcasts for Microsoft-oriented developers.

Q: What will your role be?

A: The details aren't nailed down, but in broad terms I've proposed to Microsoft
that I continue to function pretty much as I do now. That means blogging, podcasting,
and screencasting on topics that I think are interesting and important; it means doing
the kinds of lightweight and agile R&D that I've always done; and it means brokering
connections among people, software, information, and ideas -- again, as I've always
done.

Q: Why are you doing this?

A: I'm often described as a leading-edge alpha geek, and that's fair. I
am, and probably always will be, a member of that club. But I'm also increasingly
interested in reaching out to the mainstream of society.

For those of us in the club, it's a golden age. With computers and networks and
information systems we can invent new things almost as fast as we can think them up.
But we're leaving a lot of folks behind. And I'm not just talking about the digital
divide that separates the Internet haves from the have-nots. Even among the haves,
the ideas and tools and methods that some of us take for granted haven't really put
down roots in the mainstream.

I had dinner with Jon a couple of weeks ago when he came up to Microsoft for interviews
and I was impressed with the plan he described for the future of his career. I was
pretty sure that once anyone interviewing him spent even a few minutes talking to
him they'd be convinced they'd found the right person for the job, even though the
job was Jon's idea. I was honored that Jon contacted me to talk to me about his plans
and have been on pins & needles wondering if the folks at Microsoft would hire
him or not.

Jon Udell Joining Microsofthttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e2.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/12/08/JonUdellJoiningMicrosoft.aspx
Fri, 08 Dec 2006 16:59:28 GMT<p>
From Jon Udell's blog post entitled <a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2006/12/08.html">A
conversation with Jon Udell about his new job with Microsoft</a> he writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i><b>Q</b>: Your new job is with </i><i>Microsoft? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>A</b>: That's right. My last day at InfoWorld will be Friday Dec 15. On Jan
15, after a month-long sabbatical, I'll become a Microsoft employee. My official title
will be Evangelist, and I'll report to Jeff Sandquist. He's the leader of the team
that creates Channel 9 and Channel 10, websites that feature blogs, videos, screencasts,
and podcasts for Microsoft-oriented developers. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>Q</b>: What will your role be? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>A</b>: The details aren't nailed down, but in broad terms I've proposed to Microsoft
that I continue to function pretty much as I do now. That means blogging, podcasting,
and screencasting on topics that I think are interesting and important; it means doing
the kinds of lightweight and agile R&amp;D that I've always done; and it means brokering
connections among people, software, information, and ideas -- again, as I've always
done. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>Q</b>: Why are you doing this? </i>
</p>
<p>
<i><b>A</b>: I'm often described as a leading-edge alpha geek, and that's fair. I
am, and probably always will be, a member of that club. But I'm also increasingly
interested in reaching out to the mainstream of society. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> For those of us in the club, it's a golden age. With computers and networks and
information systems we can invent new things almost as fast as we can think them up.
But we're leaving a lot of folks behind. And I'm not just talking about the digital
divide that separates the Internet haves from the have-nots. Even among the haves,
the ideas and tools and methods that some of us take for granted haven't really put
down roots in the mainstream.</i>
<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I had dinner with Jon a couple of weeks ago when he came up to Microsoft for interviews
and I was impressed with the plan he described for the future of his career. I was
pretty sure that once anyone interviewing him spent even a few minutes talking to
him they'd be convinced they'd found the right person for the job, even though the
job was Jon's idea. I was honored that Jon contacted me to talk to me about his plans
and have been on pins &amp; needles wondering if the folks at Microsoft would hire
him or not.
<br>
</p>
<p>
Congrats to <a href="http://www.jeffsandquist.com/JonUdellIsLeavingInfoWorldAndJoiningMyTeamAtMicrosoft.aspx">Jeff
Sandquist</a>. First <a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=237876">Rory</a>,
now Jon Udell. You're hiring all the right folks.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e2" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,24122765-a4cf-4883-b035-a833ea8b97e2.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=21e5734b-cd88-48e4-b928-59ef8a9bfdb5http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,21e5734b-cd88-48e4-b928-59ef8a9bfdb5.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,21e5734b-cd88-48e4-b928-59ef8a9bfdb5.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=21e5734b-cd88-48e4-b928-59ef8a9bfdb55

In today's hot startup market, it is essentially irrational to join a big company.
That means that big companies are only attracting “B” and “C” players or they are
attracting irrational A players. And they are losing all those great “A” players they
hired in the dog days of 2002 (most of which now have fully vested stock-options).

Essentially, when the economy is good and massive amount of startup activity is
happening, the big companies suffer. Just think about it…when you see the Google $1.65
billion acquisition of YouTube, does that make you want to work more for a Google
or for a potential YouTube? I venture to guess that you’ll want to go out there and
work for startups like POSTroller and Blip.tv [Disclosure: Auren is an investor in
POSTroller and is on the advisory board of Blip.tv and both companies are looking
to recruit “A” players right now]

I disagree with the core premise of this post but it did get me thinking about how
to differentiate the typical employee at a big company like Microsoft or IBM from
the typical person who joins a startup. After watching a couple of people leave Microsoft
for startups, I think I've put my finger on the core difference between the kind of
people you see toiling at a startup versus the ones you see as faceless cogs in a
giant corporation. There are basically two kinds of people that you'll find a lot
of at large software companies like Microsoft and IBM but rarely at startups

The Risk Averse: For example,
the kind of folks with a spouse, kids and/or a mortgage.

After a few years of watching people, these are the actual differences I've seen between
startup folks and corporate ladder climbing types. It's not some silly distinction
as to whether the person is an "A" player or not.

An interesting consequence of this difference is the culture of the work environment.
A place full of people who don't want to rock the boat because they are risk averse
or indentured isn't the kind of place that will produce a project as fundamentally
risky as YouTube. Even though all the big Web
companies had online video offerings from MSN
Video to Google Video, it was YouTube that
won. How? By doing things that the typically cautious, risk averse folks in big companies
like Google and Microsoft didn't consider like allowing user uploaded content and not
bothering to have an "approval" process to ensure only appropriate videos showed up. YouTube was
clearly a lawsuit magnet of the sort that would never fly at a big company.

That is the difference between startups and big technology companies

The Risk Averse and the Indenturedhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,21e5734b-cd88-48e4-b928-59ef8a9bfdb5.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/11/28/TheRiskAverseAndTheIndentured.aspx
Tue, 28 Nov 2006 03:09:59 GMT<p>
Auren Hoffman of <a href="http://www.rapleaf.com">RapLeaf</a> has a blog post entitled <a href="http://summation.typepad.com/summation/2006/11/why_big_high_te.html">Why
big high tech companies are losing the talent war</a> where he writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>In today's hot startup market, it is essentially irrational to join a big company.
That means that big companies are only attracting “B” and “C” players or they are
attracting irrational A players. And they are losing all those great “A” players they
hired in the dog days of 2002 (most of which now have fully vested stock-options).</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Essentially, when the economy is good and massive amount of startup activity is
happening, the big companies suffer. Just think about it…when you see the Google $1.65
billion acquisition of YouTube, does that make you want to work more for a Google
or for a potential YouTube? I venture to guess that you’ll want to go out there and
work for startups like POSTroller and Blip.tv [Disclosure: Auren is an investor in
POSTroller and is on the advisory board of Blip.tv and both companies are looking
to recruit “A” players right now]</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Now there are some rational “A” players that are still going to large companies.
In order to recruit rockstar engineers, companies like Google significantly increase
the pay and offer too many perks to list. And some people have their own reasons to
join these tech companies. Niall Kennedy, a true “A” player, <a href="http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/04/niall-kennedy-microsoft.html">joined
Microsoft last April because he wanted to be at the epicenter of the PC user experience</a>.
Like a scientist attracted to a university with great resources, Niall was attracted
to Microsoft not to make a personal profit but to build true, long-lasting innovations.
Unfortunately <a href="http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/08/leaving-microsoft.html">Niall
left four months later when he realized</a> corporate bureaucracy can stifle innovation.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
I disagree with the core premise of this post but it did get me thinking about how
to differentiate the typical employee at a big company like Microsoft or IBM from
the typical person who joins a startup. After watching a couple of people leave Microsoft
for startups, I think I've put my finger on the core difference between the kind of
people you see toiling at a startup versus the ones you see as faceless cogs in a
giant corporation. There are basically two kinds of people that you'll find a lot
of at large software companies like Microsoft and IBM but rarely at startups
<br>
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_labour">The Indentured</a>: For example,
all those foreign workers on <a href="http://www.workpermit.com/us/us_h1b.htm">H-1B
visas</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion">The Risk Averse</a>: For example,
the kind of folks with a spouse, kids and/or a mortgage.
</li>
</ol>
<p>
After a few years of watching people, these are the actual differences I've seen between
startup folks and corporate ladder climbing types. It's not some silly distinction
as to whether the person is an "A" player or not.
</p>
<p>
An interesting consequence of this difference is the culture of the work environment.
A place full of people who don't want to rock the boat because they are risk averse
or indentured isn't the kind of place that will produce a project as fundamentally
risky as <a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a>. Even though all the big Web
companies had online video offerings&nbsp;from <a href="http://video.msn.com">MSN
Video</a> to <a href="http://video.google.com/">Google Video</a>, it was <a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a> that
won. How? By doing things that the typically cautious, risk averse folks in big companies
like Google and Microsoft didn't consider like allowing user uploaded content <b>and</b> not
bothering to have an "approval" process to ensure only appropriate videos showed up.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.youtube.com">YouTube</a> was
clearly a lawsuit magnet of the sort that would never fly at a big company.
</p>
<p>
That is the difference between startups and big technology companies
</p>
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I don't really have much commentary on this but I thought this was still worth sharing.
Earlier, this week Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post entitled Choices
= Headaches where he writes

I'm sure there's a whole team of UI designers, programmers, and testers
who worked very hard on the OFF button in Windows Vista, but seriously, is this the
best you could come up with?

Every time you want to leave your computer, you have to choose between nine, count
them, nine options: two icons and seven menu items. The two icons, I think, are shortcuts
to menu items. I'm guessing the lock icon does the same thing as the lock menu item,
but I'm not sure which menu item the on/off icon corresponds to.

This was followed up yesterday by Moishe Lettvin who used to work on the feature at
Microsoft and has since gone to Google to work on Orkut. In his post entitled The
Windows Shutdown crapfest, Moishe gives his perspective on some of the problems
he faced while working on the feature for Longhorn Vista.

My main problem with Joel's post seems to be that his complaint seems to already be
addressed by Vista. Isn't that the icon for a power button right there on the screen?
So the nine options he complains about are really for advanced users? Regular users
should only need to ever click the power button icon or the padlock icon.

Then again, we shouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Microsoft rant.
:)

Back and Forth on the Vista Shutdown Menuhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,5a7af290-5d42-4a19-97fa-e9d7c53c1729.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/11/25/BackAndForthOnTheVistaShutdownMenu.aspx
Sat, 25 Nov 2006 16:24:44 GMT<p>
I don't really have much commentary on this but I thought this was still worth sharing.
Earlier, this week Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post entitled <a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html">Choices
= Headaches</a> where he writes
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i>I'm sure there's a whole <em>team</em> of UI designers, programmers, and testers
who worked very hard on the OFF button in Windows Vista, but seriously, is this the
best you could come up with?</i>
</p>
<p>
<i><img alt="Image of the menu in Windows Vista for turning off the computer" src="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21vistaOff.PNG" border="0"></i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Every time you want to leave your computer, you have to choose between nine, count
them, nine options: two icons and seven menu items. The two icons, I think, are shortcuts
to menu items. I'm guessing the lock icon does the same thing as the lock menu item,
but I'm not sure which menu item the on/off icon corresponds to.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This was followed up yesterday by Moishe Lettvin who used to work on the feature at
Microsoft and has since gone to Google to work on Orkut. In his post entitled <a href="http://www.drizzle.com/%7Elettvin/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html"> The
Windows Shutdown crapfest</a>, Moishe gives his perspective on some of the problems
he faced while working on the feature for <strike>Longhorn</strike> Vista.
</p>
<p>
My main problem with Joel's post seems to be that his complaint seems to already be
addressed by Vista. Isn't that the icon for a power button right there on the screen?
So the nine options he complains about are really for advanced users? Regular users
should only need to ever click the power button icon or the padlock icon.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
Then again, we shouldn't let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Microsoft rant.
:)
</p>
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A few days ago there was an article on
the BBC News site entitled Zune
problems for MSN customers which stated

But in a move that could alienate some customers, MSN-bought tracks will not be
compatible with the new gadget. The move could also spell problems for the makers
of MP3 players which are built to work with the MSN store.
...
The problem has arisen because tracks from the MSN Music site are compatible with
the specifications of the Plays For Sure initiative.
This was intended to re-assure consumers as it guaranteed that music bought from services
backing it would work with players that supported it. MSN Music, Napster, AOL Music
Now and Urge all backed Plays For Sure as did many players from hardware makers such
as Archos, Creative, Dell and Iriver.

In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: "Since Zune is a separate offering that
is not part of the Plays For Sure ecosystem, Zune content is not supported on Plays
For Sure devices." The spokesperson continued: "We will not be performing compatibility
testing for non-Zune devices, and we will not make changes to our software to ensure
compatibility with non-Zune devices."
...
Microsoft said that its Windows Media Player will recognise Zune content which might
make it possible to put the content on a Plays For Sure device. However, it said it
would not provide customer support to anyone attempting this.

Microsoft went with its trusted Windows strategy: If you code it, the
hardware makers will come (and pay licensing fees). And sure enough, companies like
Dell, Samsung and Creative made
the players; companies like Yahoo,
Rhapsody, Napster and
MTV built the music stores.

But PlaysForSure bombed. All of them put together stole only market-share crumbs
from Apple. The interaction among player, software and store was balky and complex
— something of a drawback when the system is called PlaysForSure.“Yahoo might change
the address of its D.R.M. server, and we can’t control that,” said Scott Erickson,
a Zune product manager. (Never mind what a D.R.M. server is; the point is that Microsoft
blames its partners for the technical glitches.) Is Microsoft admitting, then, that
PlaysForSure was a dud? All Mr. Erickson will say is, “PlaysForSure works for some
people, but it’s not as easy as the Zune.”

So now Microsoft is starting over. Never mind all the poor slobs who bought big
PlaysForSure music collections. Never mind the PlaysForSure companies who now find
themselves competing with their former leader. Their reward for buying into Microsoft’s
original vision? A great big “So long, suckas!” It was bad enough when there were
two incompatible copy-protection standards: iTunes and PlaysForSure. Now there will
be three.

(Although Microsoft is shutting its own PlaysForSure music store next week, it
insists that the PlaysForSure program itself will live on.)

Microsoft’s proprietary closed system abandons one potential audience: those who
would have chosen an iPod competitor just to show their resentment for Apple’s proprietary
closed system. To make matters worse, you can’t use Windows Media Player to load the
Zune with music; you have to install a similar but less powerful Windows program just
for the Zune. It’s a ridiculous duplication of effort by Microsoft, and a double learning
curve for you.

So how is the Zune? It had better be pretty incredible to justify all of this hassle.

As it turns out, the player is excellent.

On days like this, I miss having Robert
Scoble roaming the halls in the B0rg cube. It sucks when you let the press tell
your story for you.

The Press on Zune and PlaysForSurehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,1edc7812-f4e9-43a1-9d65-074158f8f74b.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/11/09/ThePressOnZuneAndPlaysForSure.aspx
Thu, 09 Nov 2006 23:18:07 GMTA few days ago there was an article on the BBC News site entitled <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6120272.stm">Zune
problems for MSN customers</a> which stated <blockquote>
<p>
<i>But in a move that could alienate some customers, MSN-bought tracks will not be
compatible with the new gadget. The move could also spell problems for the makers
of MP3 players which are built to work with the MSN store.<br>
...<br>
The problem has arisen because tracks from the MSN Music site are compatible with
the specifications of the <font color="#ff0000">Plays For Sure</font> initiative.
This was intended to re-assure consumers as it guaranteed that music bought from services
backing it would work with players that supported it. MSN Music, Napster, AOL Music
Now and Urge all backed Plays For Sure as did many players from hardware makers such
as Archos, Creative, Dell and Iriver.<br>
<br>
In a statement a Microsoft spokesperson said: "Since Zune is a separate offering that
is not part of the Plays For Sure ecosystem, Zune content is not supported on Plays
For Sure devices." The spokesperson continued: "We will not be performing compatibility
testing for non-Zune devices, and we will not make changes to our software to ensure
compatibility with non-Zune devices."<br>
...<br>
Microsoft said that its Windows Media Player will recognise Zune content which might
make it possible to put the content on a Plays For Sure device. However, it said it
would not provide customer support to anyone attempting this. </i>
<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
On a similar note there was an article entitled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/technology/09pogue.html?ei=5090&amp;en=09a2b6e6ca30bd50&amp;ex=1320728400&amp;adxnnl=1&amp;partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss&amp;adxnnlx=1163113697-0pvMYIv6otKaRnIPxReOkg">Trying
Out the Zune: IPod It’s Not</a> in the New York Times today which states
</p>
<blockquote><i>Microsoft went with its trusted Windows strategy: If you code it, the
hardware makers will come (and pay licensing fees). And sure enough, companies like
Dell, Samsung and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&amp;symb=arts,automobiles,books,business,college,dining,education,fashion,garden,giving,health,jobs,magazine,movies,multimedia,nyregion,obituaries,realestate,science,sports,style,technology,theater,travel,us,washington,weekinreview,world:::More%20articles%20about%20The%20Beatles:::http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/beatles_the/index.html" title="Creative">Creative</a> made
the players; companies like <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&amp;symb=YHOO" title="Yahoo">Yahoo</a>,
Rhapsody, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/redirect/marketwatch/redirect.ctx?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&amp;symb=NAPS" title="Napster">Napster</a> and
MTV built the music stores. </i>
<p>
<i>But PlaysForSure bombed. All of them put together stole only market-share crumbs
from Apple. The interaction among player, software and store was balky and complex
— something of a drawback when the system is called PlaysForSure.“Yahoo might change
the address of its D.R.M. server, and we can’t control that,” said Scott Erickson,
a Zune product manager. (Never mind what a D.R.M. server is; the point is that Microsoft
blames its partners for the technical glitches.) Is Microsoft admitting, then, that
PlaysForSure was a dud? All Mr. Erickson will say is, “PlaysForSure works for some
people, but it’s not as easy as the Zune.” </i>
</p>
<p>
<i>So now Microsoft is starting over. Never mind all the poor slobs who bought big
PlaysForSure music collections. Never mind the PlaysForSure companies who now find
themselves competing with their former leader. Their reward for buying into Microsoft’s
original vision? A great big “So long, suckas!” It was bad enough when there were
two incompatible copy-protection standards: iTunes and PlaysForSure. Now there will
be three.</i>
</p>
<p>
<i>(Although Microsoft is shutting its own PlaysForSure music store next week, it
insists that the PlaysForSure program itself will live on.) </i>
</p>
<p>
<i>Microsoft’s proprietary closed system abandons one potential audience: those who
would have chosen an iPod competitor just to show their resentment for Apple’s proprietary
closed system. To make matters worse, you can’t use Windows Media Player to load the
Zune with music; you have to install a similar but less powerful Windows program just
for the Zune. It’s a ridiculous duplication of effort by Microsoft, and a double learning
curve for you. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i>So how is the Zune? It had better be pretty incredible to justify all of this hassle.</i>
</p>
<i>As it turns out, the player is excellent.</i> </blockquote>
<p>
On days like this, I miss having <a href="http://scobleizer.wordpress.com">Robert
Scoble</a> roaming the halls in the B0rg cube. It sucks when you let the press tell
your story for you.
</p>
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I got an email over the weekend from a friend of mine who's leaving Microsoft. I wasn't
surprised to see him leave Microsoft, given that the every project he's worked on
at Microsoft has either been cancelled mid-project or end of lifed in that release.
After being at Microsoft for five years, I've now begun to see the signs that a project
is likely to crash and burn early on. Below is a top five list of signs your software
project is in trouble I compiled as part of my 'parting career advice' to my intern.

Schedule Chicken: This is typically
a sign that the project's schedules are unrealistic. A project with unrealistic schedule
is either an indication of poor communication between layers in the product team or
even worse, bad management that punishes the messenger when there is bad news (e.g.
poor initial estimation of project length). The main problem with schedule chicken
is that you can be "date driven" or you can be "quality driven", you can't be both.

Scope Creep:
Requirements changing as a software project progresses are natural. They can change
due to feedback from the customer after they get to try out a prototype, due to changes
in the competitive landscape or because the original requirements had hidden conditions
which were not discovered until after implementation. When things get bad is when
the goals of a project are changed or increased significantly without a corresponding significant change
to the expected timeframe for delivery. WinFS
merging with Object Spaces is my canonical example of scope creep at Microsoft.

Underresourced: You don't bring
a knife to a gun fight. So you shouldn't expect that 3 developers and $50,000 will
be able to compete with the Googles and Microsofts of the world. Similarly, if you
work at a big company and you have a handful of folks working on a product where competitors
have large teams or entire companies working on the same problem space, you're probably
in over your head.

Second System Syndrome:
Once you ship a software application, it instantly becomes legacy code. To a developer
this means there is something newer and sexier that can solve the same problem in
a more elegant way. Eventually a project is started which is intended to replace the
existing product which customers are finding useful. This is often a double whammy.
The new project is hamstrung out of the gate by having to meet customer expectations
on backwards compatibility, performance and new features in comparison to the old
product. This burden is often a crushing weight on the second system which eventually
collapses under the strain. In addition, the old project is often abandoned or at
best put in "maintenance mode" with only a skeleton crew working on it even though
it pays the bills.

No Entrance Strategy: There is a lot of talk in the software industry of exit
strategies but a lot of the time software products do not have an entrance strategy.
How do you get people to use the application? How do you get the first 100,000 or
1 million users? Sometimes in big companies, there is also the corporate strategy
tax to consider when deciding whether a product has an entrance strategy
or not. When I was on the XML team at Microsoft, there were folks on the team working
on a project they called X#.
The project was basically C# with extensions to handle relational and XML data access
as operations native to the programming language. I attended an internal presentation
about the project and when asked what the deliverable from the project would be, the
team members actually showed a Photoshoped image of a Microsoft
Visual C# box which read Microsoft Visual X#. Of course, this was at the time
Microsoft was taking heat for introducing both C# & Visual Basic.NET at the same
time. It was unlikely that Microsoft would ship a third similar language anytime soon.
The project was killed, resurrected and morphed
a couple of times. The story eventually ended happily with a lot of the innovations
in the language eventually showing up as .NET
Language Integrated Query (LINQ) (aka C# 3.0). That was one instance with a happy
ending, a counter example is the new file system for Windows being cancelled
a few years after it was announced
to be shipping separately from the operating system. A file system that doesn't
ship with the operating system doesn't sound like a product with an entrance strategy
to me. How about you?

Top 5 Signs Your Project is Doomedhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,97d79491-be46-4c01-a942-ee41c812dcac.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/10/19/Top5SignsYourProjectIsDoomed.aspx
Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:06:55 GMT<p>
I got an email over the weekend from a friend of mine who's leaving Microsoft. I wasn't
surprised to see him leave Microsoft, given that the every project he's worked on
at Microsoft has either been cancelled mid-project or end of lifed in that release.
After being at Microsoft for five years, I've now begun to see the signs that a project
is likely to crash and burn early on. Below is a top five list of signs your software
project is in trouble I compiled as part of my 'parting career advice' to my intern.
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://www.stickyminds.com/se/S7923.asp">Schedule Chicken</a>: This is typically
a sign that the project's schedules are unrealistic. A project with unrealistic schedule
is either an indication of poor communication between layers in the product team or
even worse, bad management that punishes the messenger when there is bad news (e.g.
poor initial estimation of project length). The main problem with schedule chicken
is that you can be "date driven" or you can be "quality driven", you can't be both.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://www.projectperfect.com.au/info_scope_creep_mgmt.php">Scope Creep</a>:
Requirements changing as a software project progresses are natural. They can change
due to feedback from the customer after they get to try out a prototype, due to changes
in the competitive landscape or because the original requirements had hidden conditions
which were not discovered until after implementation. When things get bad is when
the goals of a project are changed or increased significantly without a corresponding <b>significant </b>change
to the expected timeframe for delivery. <a href="http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/archive/2004/05/22/139382.aspx">WinFS
merging with Object Spaces</a> is my canonical example of scope creep at Microsoft.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://paulgraham.infogami.com/blog/kiko">Underresourced</a>: You don't bring
a knife to a gun fight. So you shouldn't expect that 3 developers and $50,000 will
be able to compete with the Googles and Microsofts of the world. Similarly, if you
work at a big company and you have a handful of folks working on a product where competitors
have large teams or entire companies working on the same problem space, you're probably
in over your head.&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<a href="http://www.answers.com/topic/second-system-syndrome">Second System Syndrome</a>:
Once you ship a software application, it instantly becomes legacy code. To a developer
this means there is something newer and sexier that can solve the same problem in
a more elegant way. Eventually a project is started which is intended to replace the
existing product which customers are finding useful. This is often a double whammy.
The new project is hamstrung out of the gate by having to meet customer expectations
on backwards compatibility, performance and new features in comparison to the old
product. This burden is often a crushing weight on the second system which eventually
collapses under the strain. In addition, the old project is often abandoned or at
best put in "maintenance mode" with only a skeleton crew working on it even though
it pays the bills.&nbsp;&nbsp;
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
<b>No Entrance Strategy:</b> There is a lot of talk in the software industry of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Software-Company-Exit-Strategies-Acquisitions/dp/1596224207">exit
strategies</a> but a lot of the time software products do not have an entrance strategy.
How do you get people to use the application? How do you get the first 100,000 or
1 million users? Sometimes in big companies, there is also the corporate <a href="http://davenet.scripting.com/2001/04/30/strategyTax">strategy
tax</a> to consider&nbsp;when deciding whether a product has an entrance strategy
or not. When I was on the XML team at Microsoft, there were folks on the team working
on a project they called <a href="http://builder.com.com/5100-6386-1058683.html">X#</a>.
The project was basically C# with extensions to handle relational and XML data access
as operations native to the programming language. I attended an internal presentation
about the project and when asked what the deliverable from the project would be, the
team members actually showed a Photoshoped image of a <a href="http://www.ehouse.at/images/software/microsoft/visualcsharpnetstandard.jpg">Microsoft
Visual C#</a> box which read Microsoft Visual X#. Of course, this was at the time
Microsoft was taking heat for introducing both C# &amp; Visual Basic.NET at the same
time. It was unlikely that Microsoft would ship a third similar language anytime soon.
The project was killed, resurrected&nbsp; and <a href="http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2004/03/26/x-to-xen-to-c-omega/">morphed
a couple of times</a>. The story eventually ended happily with a lot of the innovations
in the language eventually showing up as <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/ref/linq/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/linqprojectovw.asp">.NET
Language Integrated Query (LINQ)</a> (aka C# 3.0). That was one instance with a happy
ending, a counter example&nbsp;is the new file system for Windows being cancelled
a few years after it was <a href="http://news.com.com/New+file+system+has+long+road+to+Windows/2100-1016_3-5487641.html">announced
to be shipping separately from the operating system</a>. A file system that doesn't
ship with the operating system doesn't sound like a product with an entrance strategy
to me. How about you?
</p>
</li>
</ol>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=97d79491-be46-4c01-a942-ee41c812dcac" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,97d79491-be46-4c01-a942-ee41c812dcac.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b216http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b216.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b216.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b2163

I have a question.
For internal candidates, is there a selection meeting including the job owner (manager),
supervisors of the internal candiates, a representative from the talent management
team, and the HR gen? If not, will the job owner talk with the candidate's current
supervisor?
Thanks.

Hrbp - The hiring manager (job owner) will look at the
employee's previous reviews and speak with his/her manager AFTER the employee has
notified his/her team of upcoming interviews. The current manager must also grant
the employee "permission to interview."

gretchen

The concept of "Permission to Interview" is probably the worst idea that Microsoft's
HR group has come up with and this is after considering other questionable practices
like The
Curve & getting
rid of the towel service. What happens when you tell your manager you want permission
to leave the team? First of all, your manager has veto power over this decision or
at the minimum can delay it for months at a time. Secondly, you're automatically labelled
as a "bad" employee which sucks if you don't make it through the interviews on the
team you want to transfer to or your opportunity to move is delayed for so long the
other team finds someone else.

I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard someone say that they or someone
they know is interviewing with Google or some other external company because they
(i) don't want to risk asking for permission to interview or (ii) their management
team has placed a temporary ban on permissions to interview. This means that
the awesome thing about "permission to interview" is that it encourages people
to leave the company once they've decided to leave a team because they are no longer
a good fit or have a bad manager.

Counterproductive Internal Hiring Practiceshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b216.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/10/03/CounterproductiveInternalHiringPractices.aspx
Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:16:50 GMT<p>
Last year, in the comments to a blog post entitled <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2005/05/31/423623.aspx#484448">Career
Development at Microsoft: The internal interview process</a>, there was the following
exchange
</p>
<blockquote>
<div class="comment">
<h4>
<i><a id="ctl00___ctl00___ctl01___Comments___Comments_ctl11_PermaLink" title="permalink" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2005/05/31/423623.aspx#484448">#</a> re:
Career Development at Microsoft: The internal interview process<a name="484448"></a></i>
</h4>
<div class="commentssubhead"><i> Monday, October 24, 2005 11:38 PM by <a id="ctl00___ctl00___ctl01___Comments___Comments_ctl11_NameLink" title="hrbp" target="_blank">hrbp</a><span class="commentspan"></span></i>
</div>
<div class="commentsbody"><i> I have a question.
<br>
For internal candidates, is there a selection meeting including the job owner (manager),
supervisors of the internal candiates, a representative from the talent management
team, and the HR gen? If not, will the job owner talk with the candidate's current
supervisor?
<br>
Thanks. </i>
</div>
</div>
<div class="commentowner">
<h4>
<i><a id="ctl00___ctl00___ctl01___Comments___Comments_ctl12_PermaLink" title="permalink" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2005/05/31/423623.aspx#484831">#</a> re:
Career Development at Microsoft: The internal interview process<a name="484831"></a></i>
</h4>
<div class="commentssubhead"><i> Tuesday, October 25, 2005 4:22 PM by <a id="ctl00___ctl00___ctl01___Comments___Comments_ctl12_NameLink" title="JobsBlog" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=3406" target="_blank">JobsBlog</a><span class="commentspan"></span></i>
</div>
<div class="commentsbody"><i> Hrbp - The hiring manager (job owner) will look at the
employee's previous reviews and speak with his/her manager AFTER the employee has
notified his/her team of upcoming interviews. The current manager must also grant
the employee "permission to interview."
<br>
<br>
gretchen</i>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>
The concept of <i>"Permission to Interview"</i> is probably the worst idea that Microsoft's
HR group has come up with and this is after considering other questionable practices
like <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2005/07/microsoft-stack-ranking-is-not-good.html">The
Curve</a> &amp; <a href="http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/103593.asp?source=rss">getting
rid of the towel service</a>. What happens when you tell your manager you want permission
to leave the team? First of all, your manager has veto power over this decision or
at the minimum can delay it for months at a time. Secondly, you're automatically labelled
as a "bad" employee which sucks if you don't make it through the interviews on the
team you want to transfer to or your opportunity to move is delayed for so long the
other team finds someone else.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
I've lost count of the amount of times I've heard someone say that they or someone
they know is interviewing with Google or some other external company because they
(i) don't want to risk asking for permission to interview or (ii) their management
team has placed a <i>temporary</i> ban on permissions to interview. This means that
the <b>awesome </b>thing about "permission to interview" is that it encourages people
to leave the company once they've decided to leave a team because they are no longer
a good fit or have a bad manager.
</p>
<p>
Why am I writing about this now? See the Mini-Microsoft post <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/10/microsoft-internal-transfers-just-got.html"> Microsoft
Internal Transfers Just Got a Whole Lot Easier</a>. Another Dilbert-style HR practice
bites the dust. <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/brummel/">Lisa Brummel</a> is
slowly becoming my favorite Microsoft employee.
<br>
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b216" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,fd8b0d04-d421-45fb-840b-932b2be4b216.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45ehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45e.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45e.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45e5

At the Company Meeting last week, Ray Ozzie stood up and gave a very
nice, very inspiring speech about how we have to shift the company to Live (Windows
Live, Office Live, etc). He spoke without slides or notes and it's obviously something
he cares a lot about and has thought a lot about. I'm entirely convinced that he has
a great vision of the future in his mind.

The only problem is, I really don't know what he is talking about.

I'm fully prepared to believe it's because I'm too dense to understand. But when
he talks about "betting the company
on Windows Live", what does that mean? How does Windows become a service? I understand
that there are things we need to do in order to make the Internet a platform; back
in 2000 I wrote that I thought that's what .Net was. But I don't see how this involves
changing Windows in some fundamental way.

This isn't the first time I've heard someone from Microsoft say they don't understand
what Ray Ozzie is talking about when he talks about "Live" software. I feel such a
disconnect when I hear this because when I read Ray's "Internet
Services Disruption Memo, I was like "Duh" so it is difficult to understand the
perspective of people who don't appreciate the power of the Web.

From my perspective, Ray Ozzie's memo and his various speeches have one simple message

The Web has fundamentally changed the face of computing.

The Web is here to stay.

The world's largest software company has to adapt to this reality

A good analogy for understanding what it means for software to embrace the Web is
to compare an application like WinAmp
3.0 which plays music on your hard drive or from CD to iTunes
7.0 which plays music on your hard drive or from CD and can be used to
purchase music from an online store and can be used to subscribe to
podcasts on the Web. One doesn't have to resort to "creating an AJAX version
of WinAmp" or whatever other straw man argument usually comes up in this context to
turn a desktop MP3 player into "Live" software. iTunes shows that.

What Microsoft needs to do is repeat that lesson across all of its products and think
about how they can embrace the Web instead of simply reacting to it or barely acknowledging
its existence.

What's Ray Ozzie Talking About?http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45e.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/09/30/WhatsRayOzzieTalkingAbout.aspx
Sat, 30 Sep 2006 04:18:49 GMT<p>
Adam Barr has a blog post entitled <a href="http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2006/09/trying_to_grok.html">Trying
to Grok Windows Live</a> where he writes
</p>
<blockquote> <i>At the Company Meeting last week, Ray Ozzie stood up and gave a very
nice, very inspiring speech about how we have to shift the company to Live (Windows
Live, Office Live, etc). He spoke without slides or notes and it's obviously something
he cares a lot about and has thought a lot about. I'm entirely convinced that he has
a great vision of the future in his mind. </i>
<p>
<i> The only problem is, I really don't know what he is talking about. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> I'm fully prepared to believe it's because I'm too dense to understand. But when
he talks about <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/web2explorer/?p=214">"betting the company
on Windows Live"</a>, what does that mean? How does Windows become a service? I understand
that there are things we need to do in order to make the Internet a platform; back
in 2000 I wrote that I thought that's what .Net was. But I don't see how this involves
changing Windows in some fundamental way.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
This isn't the first time I've heard someone from Microsoft say they don't understand
what Ray Ozzie is talking about when he talks about "Live" software. I feel such a
disconnect when I hear this because when I read Ray's "<a href="http://www.scripting.com/disruption/ozzie/TheInternetServicesDisruptio.htm">Internet
Services Disruption Memo</a>, I was like "Duh" so it is difficult to understand the
perspective of people who don't appreciate the power of the Web.
<br>
</p>
<p>
From my perspective, Ray Ozzie's memo and his various speeches have one simple message
<br>
</p>
<ol>
<li>
The Web has fundamentally changed the face of computing.
<br>
</li>
<li>
The Web is here to stay.
<br>
</li>
<li>
The world's largest software company has to adapt to this reality<br>
</li>
</ol>
A good analogy for understanding what it means for software to embrace the Web is
to compare an application like <a href="http://www.winsite.com/bin/Info?11500000036287">WinAmp
3.0</a> which plays music on your hard drive or from CD to <a href="http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview/">iTunes
7.0</a> which plays music on your hard drive or from CD <b>and </b>can be used to
purchase music from an <i>online </i>store <b>and </b>can be used to subscribe to
podcasts <i>on the Web</i>. One doesn't have to resort to "creating an AJAX version
of WinAmp" or whatever other straw man argument usually comes up in this context to
turn a desktop MP3 player into "Live" software. iTunes shows that.
<p>
</p>
<p>
What Microsoft needs to do is repeat that lesson across all of its products and think
about how they can embrace the Web instead of simply reacting to it or barely acknowledging
its existence.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45e" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,b1ad6b47-32ee-47a4-b849-65879afea45e.aspxLife in the B0rg CubeWindows Livehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82

Lately I find that the stories I have been writing turn out not to be suitable for
publication. It makes me kind of sad, because I've written a few things recently that
I think are actually really good, but I haven't published them here, because if I
did, there would be people who would never speak to me again. Either people who are
too close to the stories to
think they're funny, or people who are too far
away from them to think they're funny.

I think maybe the problem is that I really didn't write them well enough at all: if
I'd done my job, then everyone reading them would understand why they were funny.
If it only makes sense to people who think
like me, then I haven't done my job, right?

A few days ago I wrote a blog post entitled Leaving MSFT in Five Years: Year One which
was meant to be a follow up to a blog post I wrote a year ago entitled On
Moving On From Microsoft in 5 Years. After writing it, I realized I didn't have
the stomach to deal with whatever comments or emails I got about the post whether
they were good or bad. Just writing the blog post was cathartic even though I never
published it and probably never will.

However this afternoon, I saw a blog post Rebuilding
Microsoft in Wired Magazine on the Mini-Microsoft blog which talks about the winds
of change at Microsoft. I felt drawn to comment even if my comment is just that I
like the changes that have been occuring at Microsoft over the past year and I like
having leadership like Ray
Ozzie, Steven Sinofsky and Chris
Jones running Windows Live.

Have a good weekend. See you at Chuck-E-Cheese's.
:)
Unspeakablehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/09/29/Unspeakable.aspx
Fri, 29 Sep 2006 23:16:07 GMT<blockquote>
<p>
Lately I find that the stories I have been writing turn out not to be suitable for
publication. It makes me kind of sad, because I've written a few things recently that
I think are actually really good, but I haven't published them here, because if I
did, there would be people who would never speak to me again. Either people who are
too <a href="http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/rushour.html">close</a> to the stories to
think they're funny, or people who are too <a href="http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/corleone.html">far
away</a> from them to think they're funny.
</p>
<p>
I think maybe the problem is that I really didn't write them well enough at all: if
I'd done my job, then everyone reading them would understand why they were funny.
If it only makes sense to people who <a href="http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/monkeybutter.html">think
like me</a>, then I haven't done my job, right?
</p>
<p>
-&nbsp;<a href="http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/unspeakable.html">Jamie Zawinski</a>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
A few days ago I wrote a blog post entitled <i>Leaving MSFT in Five Years: Year One</i> which
was meant to be a follow up to a blog post I wrote a year ago entitled <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f89bf559-922f-4e1c-8b72-e5aeedb84291">On
Moving On From Microsoft in 5 Years</a>. After writing it, I realized I didn't have
the stomach to deal with whatever comments or emails I got about the post whether
they were good or bad. Just writing the blog post was cathartic even though I never
published it and probably never will.
</p>
<p>
However this afternoon, I saw a blog post <a href="http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/09/rebuilding-microsoft-in-wired-magazine.html"> Rebuilding
Microsoft in Wired Magazine</a> on the Mini-Microsoft blog which talks about the winds
of change at Microsoft. I felt drawn to comment even if my comment is just that I
like the changes that have been occuring at Microsoft over the past year and I like
having leadership like <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ozzie/">Ray
Ozzie</a>, <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ssinofsky/">Steven Sinofsky</a> and <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/cjones/">Chris
Jones</a> running Windows Live.
</p>
Have a good weekend. See you at <a href="http://www.chuckecheese.com/">Chuck-E-Cheese's</a>.
:)
<br>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,52c3bb84-36c6-4574-8df2-f89f2c1eea82.aspxLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5chttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5c5
Steve Yegge, who works at Google, has a
blog post entitled Good
Agile, Bad Agile which has a lot of really interesting bits. The first is his
take on the origin of Extreme Programming where he writes

So some of the consultants began to think: "Hey, if these companies
insist on acting like infants, then we should treat them like infants!" And
so they did. When a company said "we want features A through Z", the consultants would
get these big index cards and write "A" on the first one, "B" on the second one, etc.,
along with time estimates, and then post them on their wall. Then when the customer
wanted to add something, the consultant could point at the wall and say: "OK, boy.
Which one of these cards do you want to replace, BOY?"

So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at a bar one day,
and one of them (named L. Ron Hubbard) said: "This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame.
You know where the real money is at? You start your own religion." And that's
how both Extreme Programming and Scientology were born.

The link which explains that Chrysler cancelled the project where a lot of the Extreme
Programming and Agile Methodology hype started is on Wikipedia so for all I know that
clarification may be gone by the time you read this post. Unfortunately in trying
to track down the details in more permanent location all I can find is a USENET
thread and more wiki
entries. That's pretty interesting, that XP and Agile resulted in a failed software
project in the original project where it all started.

There is also some stuff about working at Google where he writes

From a high level, Google's process probably does look like chaos
to someone from a more traditional software development company. As a newcomer, some
of the things that leap out at you include:

- there are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them
more like tech leads.

- developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked;
just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new
office with your new team.

- Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they
take it pretty seriously.

- developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their
M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want,
as long as it's not their main project.

- there aren't very many meetings. I'd say an average developer attends perhaps 3
meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead.

- it's quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes
in little groups or 2 to 5.

- there aren't Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management
artifacts in evidence, not that I've ever seen.

- even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner,
which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don't work insane hours unless
they want to.

For some reason this reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's The
Talent Myth which is excerpted below

This "talent mind-set" is the new orthodoxy of American management. It
is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees
from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives
have become so lavish. In the modern corporation, the system is considered only as
strong as its stars, and, in the past few years, this message has been preached by
consultants and management gurus all over the world. None, however, have spread the
word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent
mind-set closest to heart. It was a company where McKinsey conducted twenty separate
projects, where McKinsey's billings topped ten million dollars a year, where a McKinsey
director regularly attended board meetings, and where the C.E.O. himself was a former
McKinsey partner. The company, of course, was Enron.
...
"We had these things called Super Saturdays," one former Enron manager recalls. "I'd
interview some of these guys who were fresh out of Harvard, and these kids could blow
me out of the water. They knew things I'd never heard of." Once at Enron, the top
performers were rewarded inordinately, and promoted without regard for seniority or
experience. Enron was a star system. "The only thing that differentiates Enron from
our competitors is our people, our talent," Lay, Enron's former chairman and C.E.O.,
told the McKinsey consultants when they came to the company's headquarters, in Houston.
...
Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were
proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for
hiring. In the open-market system--McKinsey's assault on the very idea of a fixed
organization--anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager
was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged. When an Enron executive
named Kevin Hannon started the company's global broadband unit, he launched what he
called Project Quick Hire. A hundred top performers from around the company were invited
to the Houston Hyatt to hear Hannon give his pitch. Recruiting booths were set up
outside the meeting room. "Hannon had his fifty top performers for the broadband unit
by the end of the week," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write, "and his peers
had fifty holes to fill." Nobody, not even the consultants who were paid to think
about the Enron culture, seemed worried that those fifty holes might disrupt the functioning
of the affected departments, that stability in a firm's existing businesses might
be a good thing, that the self-fulfillment of Enron's star employees might possibly
be in conflict with the best interests of the firm as a whole.

Interesting juxtaposition, huh? I've talked to people who've come to Microsoft from
Google (e.g. Danny Thorpe) and it definitely
is as chaotic as it sounds there. For some reason, the description of life at Google
by Steve Yegge reminds me a bit of Microsoft where there were two huge money making
projects (Office & Windows in the case of Microsoft and AdWords & AdSense
in the case of Google) and then a bunch of good to mediocre projects full of smart
people dicking around. Over the years I've seen a reduction of the 'smart people dicking
around' type projects over here and more focus on shipping code. I suspect that it's
just a matter of time before the same thing will happen at Google as investors seek
a better return on their investments once they hit their growth limits in the online
advertising space.

There's just one more thing that Steve Yegge wrote that I want to comment on, which
is

The thing that drives the right behavior at Google, more than anything
else, more than all the other things combined, is gratitude. You can't
help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them
for taking such incredibly good care of you.

I remember interning at Microsoft five years ago and hearing someone say how grateful
he was for "the things Microsoft has done for me" and thinking how creepy and cult-like
that sounded. A company pays you at worst 'what they think they can get away with'
and at best 'what they think you are worth', neither of these should inspire gratitude.
Never forget that or else you'll be on the road to heartbreak.

Life at Google and the Talent Mythhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5c.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/09/28/LifeAtGoogleAndTheTalentMyth.aspx
Thu, 28 Sep 2006 17:05:26 GMTSteve Yegge, who works at Google, has a blog post entitled <a href="http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html"> Good
Agile, Bad Agile</a> which has a lot of really interesting bits. The first is his
take on the origin of Extreme Programming where he writes
<br>
<blockquote><i>So some of the consultants began to think: "Hey, if these companies
insist on acting like infants, then we should <em>treat</em> them like infants!" And
so they did. When a company said "we want features A through Z", the consultants would
get these big index cards and write "A" on the first one, "B" on the second one, etc.,
along with time estimates, and then post them on their wall. Then when the customer
wanted to add something, the consultant could point at the wall and say: "OK, <em>boy</em>.
Which one of these <em>cards</em> do you want to <em>replace</em>, <em>BOY?</em>"<br>
<br>
Is it any wonder Chrysler <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming#History">canceled
the project</a>?<br>
<br>
So the consultants, now having lost their primary customer, were at a bar one day,
and one of them (named L. Ron Hubbard) said: "This nickel-a-line-of-code gig is lame.
You know where the <em>real</em> money is at? You start your own religion." And that's
how both Extreme Programming <em>and</em> Scientology were born.</i></blockquote>
<p>
The link which explains that Chrysler cancelled the project where a lot of the Extreme
Programming and Agile Methodology hype started is on Wikipedia so for all I know that
clarification may be gone by the time you read this post. Unfortunately in trying
to track down the details in more permanent location all I can find is a <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/borland.public.delphi.non-technical/browse_frm/thread/b71244cf2b65b904/2c3da52d0e1df077?lnk=st&amp;q=XP+at+chrysler&amp;rnum=3#2c3da52d0e1df077">USENET
thread</a> and <a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CthreeProjectTerminated">more wiki
entries</a>. That's pretty interesting, that XP and Agile resulted in a failed software
project in the original project where it all started.
<br>
</p>
<p>
There is also some stuff about working at Google where he writes
<br>
</p>
<blockquote><i> From a high level, Google's process probably does look like chaos
to someone from a more traditional software development company. As a newcomer, some
of the things that leap out at you include:<br>
<br>
- there are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them
more like tech leads.<br>
<br>
- developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked;
just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new
office with your new team.<br>
<br>
- Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they
take it pretty seriously.<br>
<br>
- developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their
M-F, 8-5 time, <em>not</em> weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want,
as long as it's not their main project.<br>
<br>
- there aren't very many meetings. I'd say an average developer attends perhaps 3
meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead.<br>
<br>
- it's quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes
in little groups or 2 to 5.<br>
<br>
- there aren't Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management
artifacts in evidence, not that I've ever seen.<br>
<br>
- even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner,
which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don't work insane hours unless
they <em>want</em> to.</i></blockquote>
<p>
For some reason this reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell's <a href="http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_07_22_a_talent.htm">The
Talent Myth</a> which is excerpted below
</p>
<blockquote>This "talent mind-set" is the new orthodoxy of American management. It
is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees
from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives
have become so lavish. In the modern corporation, the system is considered only as
strong as its stars, and, in the past few years, this message has been preached by
consultants and management gurus all over the world. None, however, have spread the
word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent
mind-set closest to heart. It was a company where McKinsey conducted twenty separate
projects, where McKinsey's billings topped ten million dollars a year, where a McKinsey
director regularly attended board meetings, and where the C.E.O. himself was a former
McKinsey partner. The company, of course, was Enron.<br>
...<br>
"We had these things called Super Saturdays," one former Enron manager recalls. "I'd
interview some of these guys who were fresh out of Harvard, and these kids could blow
me out of the water. They knew things I'd never heard of." Once at Enron, the top
performers were rewarded inordinately, and promoted without regard for seniority or
experience. Enron was a star system. "The only thing that differentiates Enron from
our competitors is our people, our talent," Lay, Enron's former chairman and C.E.O.,
told the McKinsey consultants when they came to the company's headquarters, in Houston.<br>
...<br>
Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were
proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for
hiring. In the open-market system--McKinsey's assault on the very idea of a fixed
organization--anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager
was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged. When an Enron executive
named Kevin Hannon started the company's global broadband unit, he launched what he
called Project Quick Hire. A hundred top performers from around the company were invited
to the Houston Hyatt to hear Hannon give his pitch. Recruiting booths were set up
outside the meeting room. "Hannon had his fifty top performers for the broadband unit
by the end of the week," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write, "and his peers
had fifty holes to fill." Nobody, not even the consultants who were paid to think
about the Enron culture, seemed worried that those fifty holes might disrupt the functioning
of the affected departments, that stability in a firm's existing businesses might
be a good thing, that the self-fulfillment of Enron's star employees might possibly
be in conflict with the best interests of the firm as a whole.</blockquote>
<p>
Interesting juxtaposition, huh? I've talked to people who've come to Microsoft from
Google (e.g. <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/dthorpe/">Danny Thorpe</a>) and it definitely
is as chaotic as it sounds there. For some reason, the description of life at Google
by Steve Yegge reminds me a bit of Microsoft where there were two huge money making
projects (Office &amp; Windows in the case of Microsoft and AdWords &amp; AdSense
in the case of Google) and then a bunch of good to mediocre projects full of smart
people dicking around. Over the years I've seen a reduction of the 'smart people dicking
around' type projects over here and more focus on shipping code. I suspect that it's
just a matter of time before the same thing will happen at Google as investors seek
a better return on their investments once they hit their growth limits in the online
advertising space.
</p>
<p>
There's just one more thing that Steve Yegge wrote that I want to comment on, which
is
</p>
<blockquote><i>The thing that drives the right behavior at Google, more than anything
else, more than all the other things combined, is <b><em>gratitude</em>. </b>You can't
help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them
for taking such incredibly good care of you.</i> </blockquote>
<p>
I remember interning at Microsoft five years ago and hearing someone say how grateful
he was for "the things Microsoft has done for me" and thinking how creepy and cult-like
that sounded. A company pays you at worst 'what they think they can get away with'
and at best 'what they think you are worth', neither of these should inspire gratitude.
Never forget that or else you'll be on the road to heartbreak.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5c" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,2f33ca2b-56ae-4328-936b-22d0913f8d5c.aspxCompetitors/Web CompaniesLife in the B0rg Cubehttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/Trackback.aspx?guid=17aeac37-0085-4e22-bc0a-b75a3dbae13ahttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/pingback.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,17aeac37-0085-4e22-bc0a-b75a3dbae13a.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,17aeac37-0085-4e22-bc0a-b75a3dbae13a.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/SyndicationService.asmx/GetEntryCommentsRss?guid=17aeac37-0085-4e22-bc0a-b75a3dbae13a2

The company revamped its compensation plan in 2003 to hold onto key executives
because many of the stock options granted previously were worthless. Doing so gave
the company a way to reward executives and remain competitive with rival employers
such as Google Inc. after the stock fell 56 percent in 2001 and 2002.

It's September which means our yearly bonuses and raises are around the corner. It
looks like I need to think up another excuse for why my girlfriend and I can't go
furniture shopping at IKEA. :)

It's That Time of Year Againhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,17aeac37-0085-4e22-bc0a-b75a3dbae13a.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/09/01/ItsThatTimeOfYearAgain.aspx
Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:42:34 GMT<p>
From the Bloomberg news article <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&amp;sid=aiGFUMfVfH28&amp;refer=home">Microsoft
Gives Bonuses Totaling Almost $1 Billion (Update3)</a> we learn
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
<i> Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. paid out performance bonuses totaling almost
$1 billion in restricted stock to 900 of its top executives. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> One-third of the 37 million shares vest immediately, Redmond, Washington-based
Microsoft, the world's biggest software company, said in a regulatory filing today.
Chairman Bill Gates and Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer were excluded. </i>
</p>
<p>
<i> The company revamped its compensation plan in 2003 to hold onto key executives
because many of the stock options granted previously were worthless. Doing so gave
the company a way to reward executives and remain competitive with rival employers
such as Google Inc. after the stock fell 56 percent in 2001 and 2002.</i>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
It's September which means our yearly bonuses and raises are around the corner. It
looks like I need to think up another excuse for why my girlfriend and I can't go
furniture shopping at <a href="http://www.ikea.com">IKEA</a>. :)
<br>
</p>
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It all started with an article on C|Net entitled Open
source steps in to duplicate .Net which implied that Microsoft's licensing terms
may not be favorable for Open Source implementations of the .NET Framework such as Mono and DotGNU.
At the time, I thought it was rather two-faced of Microsoft to claim that the CLI
and C# were going to be open ECMA standards but then threaten to prohibit Open Source
implementations. So I fired of an ranting mail to the internal discussion list focused
on the .NET Framework pointing out this inconsistency in Microsoft's position. At
first, I got a bunch of replies smacking me down for daring to question Microsoft's
strategy but after a couple of supportive mails from coworkers like Fadi Fakhouri, Omri
Gazitt and a couple of others I eventually got routed to the right person. I met
with Tony Goodhew who
was quoted in the C|Net article and he set me straight. When I found out that this
wasn't the case, I mentioned that it would be a great sign of goodwill to the Open
Source community if Microsoft showed just how much they were supportive of such projects.
Since I'd also gotten to know the author of the Dr.
GUI columns on MSDN via another flame war email discussion, I
had connections at MSDN and mentioned the idea to them as well. The MSDN folks liked
the idea and when I pitched the idea to Miguel
De Icaza he did as well. Although it only took a few email exchanges between Miguel
and I to get the meat of the interview done, I didn't get the article completely edited
and approved by MSDN until after my internship was done.

It was a pretty big deal for me when the article was published especially since Slashdot
ran the story multipletimes.
The fact that I was just some punk intern and I got Microsoft to officially endorse
Mono on MSDN was a big deal to me. The entire event made me appreciate Microsoft as
a company and was a key factor in my decision to come to work for Microsoft full-time.

Now I'm trying to make sure I create an environment where the intern I'll be mentoring
over the next few months can have similar experiences. If you are or have been an
intern at Microsoft and don't mind sharing what rocked or sucked about your internship,
I'd appreciate your comments.

Intern Experienceshttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink,guid,a4e5ba6c-b926-4491-9ced-07a00f122834.aspxhttp://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2006/08/21/InternExperiences.aspx
Mon, 21 Aug 2006 16:22:34 GMT<p>
It's hard for me to believe that it's been five years since I was an intern at Microsoft.
It's still fun to go back to read my blog posts about <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=27a60aa1-b1ac-4288-9cf0-fe1253037615">my
Microsoft interview</a>, <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=eee9748a-1368-4a12-90e0-00317b0a1832">my
impressions halfway through the experience</a> and <a href="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=56bc2add-897e-4dc1-a506-038d26f37feb">my
parting thoughts at the end if the experience</a>.&nbsp;I've started thinking about
my internship again because I'm going to be the mentor/manager of an intern in a couple
of weeks and I've been taking strolls down memory lane trying to remember the experiences
that made my internship worthwhile.&nbsp;
</p>
<p>
My favorite experience is the story behind how I got the article <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dndotnet/html/deicazainterview.asp">Using
the ECMA Standards: An Interview with Miguel de Icaza</a> published on MSDN while
I was still college <u>and</u> Microsoft had only said negative things about Miguel's <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/">Mono
project</a> up until that article was published.
</p>
<p>
It all started with an article on C|Net entitled <a href="http://news.com.com/2100-1001-269665.html">Open
source steps in to duplicate .Net</a> which implied that Microsoft's licensing terms
may not be favorable for Open Source implementations of the .NET Framework such as <a href="http://www.mono-project.com/">Mono</a> and <a href="http://www.dotgnu.org/">DotGNU</a>.
At the time, I thought it was rather two-faced of Microsoft to claim that the CLI
and C# were going to be open ECMA standards but then threaten to prohibit Open Source
implementations. So I fired of an ranting mail to the internal discussion list focused
on the .NET Framework pointing out this inconsistency in Microsoft's position. At
first, I got a bunch of replies smacking me down for daring to question Microsoft's
strategy but after a couple of supportive mails from coworkers like Fadi Fakhouri, <a href="http://www.gazitt.com/OhmBlog/">Omri
Gazitt</a> and a couple of others I eventually got routed to the right person. I met
with <a href="http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=58626">Tony Goodhew</a> who
was quoted in the C|Net article and he set me straight. When I found out that this
wasn't the case, I mentioned that it would be a great sign of goodwill to the Open
Source community if Microsoft showed just how much they were supportive of such projects.
Since I'd also gotten to know the author of the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:msdn.microsoft.com+dr.+gui+msdn">Dr.
GUI columns on MSDN</a> via another <strike>flame war</strike> email discussion, I
had connections at MSDN and mentioned the idea to them as well. The MSDN folks liked
the idea and&nbsp;when I pitched the idea to <a href="http://tirania.org/blog/">Miguel
De Icaza</a> he did as well. Although it only took a few email exchanges between Miguel
and I to get the meat of the interview done, I didn't get the article completely edited
and approved by MSDN until after my internship was done.
</p>
<p>
It was a pretty big deal for me when the article was published especially since Slashdot
ran the story <a href="http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/13/0242205">multiple</a>&nbsp;<a href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/24/171241">times</a>.
The fact that I was just some punk intern and I got Microsoft to officially endorse
Mono on MSDN was a big deal to me. The entire event made me appreciate Microsoft as
a company and was a key factor in my decision to come to work for Microsoft full-time.
</p>
<p>
Now I'm trying to make sure I create an environment where the intern I'll be mentoring
over the next few months can have similar experiences. If you are or have been an
intern at Microsoft and don't mind sharing what rocked or sucked about your internship,
I'd appreciate your comments.
</p>
<img width="0" height="0" src="http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/aggbug.ashx?id=a4e5ba6c-b926-4491-9ced-07a00f122834" />http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/CommentView,guid,a4e5ba6c-b926-4491-9ced-07a00f122834.aspxLife in the B0rg Cube